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THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 
AND OTHER POEMS 



BY 

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 



EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY 
JULIAN W. ABERNETHY, PH.D., PRINCIPAL OF 
THE BERKELEY INSTITUTE, BROOKLYN, N. Y 



^ 



NEW YORK 
CHARLES E. MERRILL CO. 

44-60 East Twenty-third Street 



Two Copies Received 

NOV 3 1903 

Copyright Entry 

CLASS CX^ XXc No 

COPY :^. 






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Copyright, 1908, by Charles E. Merrill Co. 



PREFACE 

The aim of tKte'ieditio^ of .the Vision of Sir 
Launfal is to furnish the material that must be 
used in any adequate treatment of the poem in 
the class room, and to suggest other material that 
may be used in the more leisurely and fruitful 
method of study that is sometimes possible in spite 
of the restrictions of arbitrary courses of study. 

In interpreting the poem with young students, 
special emphasis should be given to the ethical 
significance, the broad appeal to human sym- 
pathy and the sense of a common brotherhood of 
men, an appeal that is in accord with the altruistic 
tendencies of the present time; to the intimate 
appreciation and love of nature expressed in the 
poem, feelings also in accord with the present 
movement of cultured minds toward the natural 
world; to the lofty" and inspiring idealism of 
Lowell, as revealed in the poems included in this 
volume and in his biography, and also as con- 
trasted with current materialism; and, finally, to 
the romantic sources of the story in the legends 
of King Arthur and his table round, a region of 
literary delight too generally unknown to present- 
day students. 

3 



4 PREFACE 

After these general topics, it is assumed that 
such matters as literary structure and poetic 
beauty will receive due attention. If the tech- 
nical faults of the poem, which critics are at much 
pains to point out, are not discovered by the stu- 
dent, his knowledge will be quite as profitable. 
Additional reading in Lowell's works should be 
secured, and can be through the sympathetic 
interest and enthusiasm of the instructor. The fol- 
lowing selections may be used for rapid examina- 
tion and discussion: Under the Willows, The First 
Snow-Fall, Under the Old Elm, Auf Wiedersehen, 
Sunthin^ in the Pastoral Line, Jonathan to John, 
Mr. Hosea Bigloiv to the Editor of the Atlantic 
Monthly, and the prose essays My Garden Ac- 
quaintance and A Good Word for Winter. The 
opportunity should not be lost for making the 
students forever and interestedly acquainted with 
Lowell, with the poet and the man. 

The editor naturally does not assume respon- 
sibility for the character of the examination ques- 
tions given at the end of this volume. They are 
questions that have been used in recent years in 
college entrance papers by two eminent examina- 
tion boards. 

J. W. A. 

October 1, 1908. 



CONTENTS 

Introduction : page 

Life of Lowell 7 

Critical Appreciations 22 

The Vision of Sir Launfal 26 

The Commemoration Ode 33 

Bibliography 39 

Poets' Tributes to Lowell 40 

Poems : 

The Vision of Sir Launfal 41 

The Shepherd of King Admetus 59 

An Incident in a Railroad Car 61 

Hebe 66 

To the Dandelion • ... 67 

My Love 72 

The Changeling 75 

An Indian-Summ.er Reverie 77 

The Oak 97 

Beaver Brook 100 

The Present Crisis 103 

The Courtin' HI 

The Commemoration Ode 116 



6 CONTENTS 

Notes: p^^^ 

The Vision of Sir Launfal 135 

The Shepherd of King Admetus 151 

Hebe 151 

To the DandeHon 152 

My Love 153 

The ChangeHng 153 

An Indian-Summer Reverie 154 

The Oak 159 

Beaver Brook 159 

The Present Crisis 160 

The Courtin' 161 

The Commemoration Ode 162 

Examination Questions 171 



INTRODUCTION 

LIFE OF LOWELL 

In Cambridge there are two literary shrines to which 
visitors are sure to find their way soon after passing the 
Harvard gates, "Craigie House/' the home of Longfellow 
and "Elmwood/' the home of Lowell. Though their 
hallowed retirement has been profaned by the encroach- 
ments of the growing city, yet in their simple dignity 
these fine old colonial mansions still bespeak the noble 
associations of the past, and stand as memorials of the 
finest products of American culture. 

Elmwood was built before the Revolution by Thomas 
Oliver, the Tory governor, who signed his abdication at 
the invitation of a committee of "about four thousand 
people" who surrounded his house at Cambridge. The 
property was confiscated by the Commonwealth and 
used by the American army during the war. In 1818 
it was purchased by the Rev. Charles Lowell, pastor of 
the West Congregational Church in Boston, and after 
ninety years it is still the family home. Here was born, 
February 22, 1819, James Russell Lowell, with surround- 
ings most propitious for the nurturing of a poet-soul. 
Within the stately home there was a refined family life; 
the father had profited by the unusual privilege of three 
years' study abroad, and his library of some four thou- 
sand volumes was not limited to theology; the mother, 
whose maiden name was Spence and who traced her 
Scotch ancestry back to the hero of the ballad of Sir 
Patrick Spens, taught her children the good old ballads 

7 



8 INTRODUCTION 

and the romantic stories in the Fairie Queen, and it was 
one of the poet's earhest delights to recount the adven- 
tures of Spenser's heroes and heroines to his playmates. 
An equally important influence upon his early youth 
was the out-of-door life at Elmwood. To the love of 
nature his soul was early dedicated, and no American 
poet has more truthfully and beautifully interpreted 
the inspired teachings of nature, whispered through the 
solemn tree-tops or caroled by the happy birds. The 
open fields surrounding Elmwood and the farms for miles 
around were his familiar playground, and furnished daily 
adventures for his curious and eager mind. The mere 
delight of this experience with nature, he says, "made 
my childhood the richest part of my life. It seems to 
me as if I had never seen nature again since those old 
days when the balancing of a yellow butterfly over a 
thistle bloom was spiritual food and lodging for a whole 
forenoon." In the Cathedral is an autobiographic pas- 
sage describing in a series of charming pi{;tures some of 
those choice hours of childhood : 

" One summer hour abides, what time I perched, 
Dappled with noonday, under simmering leaves, 
And pulled the pulpy oxhearts, while aloof 
An oriole clattered and the robins shrilled, 
Denouncing me an alien and a thief." 

Quite like other boys Lowell was subjected to the pro- 
cesses of the more formal education of books. He was 
first sent to a "dame school," and then to the private 
school of William Wells, under whose rigid tuition he 
became thoroughly grounded in the classics. Among 
his schoolfellows was W. W. Story, the poet-sculptor, 
who continued his life-long friend. Thomas Wentworth 
Higginson, who was one of the younger boys of the school, 
recalls the high talk of Story and Lowell about the Fairie 
Queen. At fifteen he entered Harvard College, then an 



INTRODUCTION 9 

institution with about two hundred students. The 
course of study in those days was narrow and dull, a 
pretty steady diet of Greek, Latin and Mathematics, 
with an occasional dessert of Paley's Evidences of Chris- 
tianity or Butler's Analogy. Lowell was not distinguished 
for scholarship, but he read omnivorously and wrote 
copiously, often in smooth flowing verse, fashioned after 
the accepted English models of the period. He was an 
editor of Harvardiana, the college magazine, and was 
elected class poet in his senior year. But his habit of 
lounging with the poets in the secluded alcoves of the 
old library, in preference to attending recitations, finally 
became too scandalous for official forbearance, and he 
was rusticated, "on account of constant neglect of his 
college duties," as the faculty records state. He was sent 
to Concord, where his exile was not without mitigating 
profit, as he became acquainted with Emerson and Tho- 
reau. Here he wrote the class poem, which he was per- 
mitted to circulate in print at his Commencement. This 
production, which now stands at the head of the list of 
his published works, was curiously unprophetic of his 
later tendencies. It was written in the neatly polished 
couplets of the Pope type and other imitative metres, 
and aimed to satirize the radical movements of the period, 
especially the transcendentalists and abolitionists, with 
both of whom he was soon to be in active sympathy. 

Lowell's first two years out of college were troubled 
with rather more than the usual doubts and question- 
ings that attend a young man's choice of a profession. 
He studied for a bachelor's degree in law, which he ob- 
tained in two years. But the work was done reluctantly. 
Law hooks, he says, "I am reading with as few wry faces 
as I may." Though he was nominally practicing law 
for two years, there is no evidence that he ever had a 
client, except the fictitious one so pleasantly described 
in his first magazine article, entitled My First Client. 



10 INTRODUCTION 

From Coke and Blackstone his mind would inevitably 
slip away to hold more congenial communion with the 
poets. He became intensely interested in the old Eng- 
lish dramatists, an interest that resulted in his first series 
of literary articles, The Old English Dramatists, published 
in the Boston Miscellany. The favor with which these 
articles were received increased, he writes, the " hope of 
being able one day to support myself l)y my pen, and to 
leave a calling which I hate, and for which I am not well 
fitted, to say the least." 

During this struggle between law and literature an 
influence came into Lowell's life that settled his pur- 
poses, directed his aspirations and essentially determined 
his career. In 1839 he writes to a friend about a "very 
pleasant young lady," w^ho ''knows more poetry than 
any one I am acquainted w4th." This pleasant young 
lady was Maria White, who became his wife in 1844. 
The loves of this young couple constitute one of the most 
pleasing episodes in the history of our literature, idyllic 
in its simple beauty and inspiring in its spiritual perfect- 
ness. "Miss White was a woman of unusual loveliness," 
says Mr. Norton, "and of gifts of mind and heart still 
more unusual, which enabled her to enter with complete 
sympathy into her lover's intellectual life and to direct 
his genius to its highest aims." She was herself a poet, 
and a little volume of her poems published privately after 
her death is an evidence of her refined intellectual gifts 
and lofty spirit. 

In 1841 Lowell published his first collection of poems, 
entitled A Year's Life. The volume was dedicated to 
" Una," a veiled admission of indebtedness for its inspira- 
tion to Miss White. Two poems particularly, Ire?ie and 
My Love, and the best in the volume, are rapturous ex- 
pressions of his new inspiration. In later years he re- 
ferred to the collection as "poor windfalls of unripe 
experience." Only nine of the sixty-eight poems were 



INTRODUCTION 11 

preserved in subsequent collections. In 1843, with a 
young friend, Robert Carter, Lowell launched a new 
magazine, The Pioneer, with the high purpose, as the pro- 
spectus stated, of giving the public "a rational substitute " 
for the "namby-pamby love tales and sketches monthly 
poured out to them by many of our popular magazines." 
These young reformers did not know how strongly the 
great reading public is attached to its literary fiesh-pots, 
and so the Pioneer proved itself too good to live in just 
three months. The result of the venture to Lowell was 
an interesting lesson in editorial work and a debt of eight- 
een hundred dollars. His next venture was a second 
volume of Poems, issued in 1844, in which the permanent 
lines of his poetic development appear more clearly than 
in A Year's Life. The tone of the first volume was uni- 
formly serious, but in the second his muse's face begins 
to brighten with the occasional play of wit and humor. 
The volume was heartily praised by the critics and his 
reputation as a new poet of convincing distinction was 
established. In the following year appeared Conver- 
sations on Some of the Old Poets, a volume of literary 
criticism interesting now mainly as pointing to maturer 
work in this field. 

It is generally stated that the influence of Maria White 
made Lowell an Abolitionist, but this is only qualifiedly 
true. A year before he had met her he wrote to a friend : 
"The Abolitionists are the only oneS with whom I sym- 
pathize of the present extant parties." Freedom, jus- 
tice, humanitarianism were fundamental to his native 
idealism. Maria White's enthusiasm and devotion to 
the cause served to crystallize his sentiments and to 
stimulate him to a practical participation in the move- 
ment. Both wrote for the Liberty Bell, an annual pub- 
lished in the interests of the anti-slavery agitation. 
Immicdiately after their marriage they went to Phila- 
delphia where Lowell for a time was an editorial writer 



12 INTRODUCTION 

for the Pennsylvania Freeman, an anti-slavery journal 
once edited by Whittier. During the next six years he 
was a regular contributor to the Anti-Slavery Standard, 
published in New York. In all of this prose writing 
Lowell exhibited the ardent spirit of the reformer, al- 
though he never adopted the extreme views of Garrison 
and others of the ultra-radical wing of the party. 

But Lowell's greatest contribution to the anti-slavery 
cause was the Biglow Papers, a series of satirical poems 
in the Yankee dialect, aimed at the politicians who were 
responsible for the Mexican War, a war undertaken, as 
he believed, in the interests of the Southorn slaveholders. 
Hitherto the Abolitionists had been regarded with con- 
tempt by the conservative, complacent advocates of 
peace and ''compromise," and to join them was essen- 
tially to lose caste in the best society. liut now a laugh- 
ing prophet had arisen whose tongue was tipped with 
fire. The Biglow Papers was an unexpected blow to 
the slave power. Never before had humor been used 
directly as a weapon in political warfare. Soon the whole 
country was ringing with the homely phrases of Hosea 
Biglow 's satiric humor, and deriding conservatism began 
to change countenance. "No speech, no plea, no ap- 
peal," says George William Curtis, "was comparable in 
popular and permanent effect with this pitiless tempest of 
fire and hail, in the form of wit, argument, satire, knowl- 
edge, insight, learning, common-sense, and patriotism. 
It was humor of the purest strain, but humor in deadly 
earnest." As an embodiment of the elemental Yankee 
character and speech it is a classic of final authority. 
Says Curtis, "Burns did not give to the Scotch tongue a 
nobler immortality than Lowell gave to the dialect of 
New England." 

The year 1848 was one of remarkably productive re- 
sults for Lowell. Besides the Biglow Papers and some 
forty magazine articles and poems, he published a third 



INTRODUCTION 13 

collection of Poems, the Vision of Sir Launfal, and the 
Fahle for Critics. The various phases of his composite 
genius were nearl}^ all represented in these volumes. 
The Fable was a good-natured satire upon his fellow 
authors, in which he touched up in rollicking rhymed 
couplets the merits and weaknesses of each, not omitting 
himself, with witty characterization and acute critical 
judgment; and it is still read for its delicious humor and 
sterling criticism. For example, the lines on Poe will 
always be quoted : 

" There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge, 
Three- fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge." 

And so the sketch of Hawthorne : 

" There is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking and rare 
That you hardly at first see the strength that is there; 
A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet. 
So earnest, so graceful, so lithe and so fleet. 
Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet." 

Lowell was now living in happy content at Elmwood. 
His father, whom he once speaks of as a "Dr. Primrose 
in the comparative degree, " had lost a large portion of 
his property, and literary journals in those days sent 
very small checks to young authors. So humble frugal- 
ity was an attendant upon the high thinking of the 
poet couple, but this did not matter, since the richest 
objects of their ideal world could be had without price. 
But clouds suddenly gathered over their beautiful lives. 
Four children were born, three of whom died in infancy. 
Lowell's deep and lasting grief for his first-born is tenderly 
recorded in the poems She Came and Went and the First 
Snow-Fail. The volume of poems published in 1848 
was ''reverently dedicated" to the memory of ''our little 
Blanche," and in the introductory poem addressed "To 



14 INTRODUCTION 

M. W. L. " he poured forth his sorrow Hke a Hbation of 
tears : 

" I thought our love at full, but I did err; 
Joy's wreath drooped o'er mine eyes; I could not see 
That sorrow in our happy world must be 
Love's deepest spokesman and interpreter." 

The year 1851-52 \vas spent abroad for the benefit of 
Mrs. Lowell's health, which was now precarious. At 
Rome their little son Walter died, and one year after 
their return to Elm wood sorrow's crown of sorrow came 
to the poet in the death of Mrs. Lowell, October, 1853. 
For years after the dear old home was to him The Dead 
House, as he wrote of it : 

" For it died that autumn morning 
When she, its soul, was borne 
To lie all dark on the hillside 

That looks over woodland and corn." 

Before 1854 Lowell's literary success had been won 
mainly in verse. With the appearance in the magazines 
of A Moosehead Journal, Fireside Travels, and Leaves 
from My Italian Journal his success as a prose essayist 
began. Henceforth, and against his will, his prose was 
a stronger literary force than his poetry. He now gave 
a course of lectures on the English poets at the Lowell 
Institute, and during the progress of these lectures he 
received notice of his appointment to succeed Longfellow 
in the professorship of the French and Spanish languages 
'■ and Belles-Lettres in Harvard College. A year was 
spent in Europe in preparation for his new work, and 
during the next twenty years he faithfully performed the 
duties of the professorship, pouring forth the ripening 
fruits of his varied studies in lectures such as it is not often 
the privilege of college students to hear. That pulling 



INTRODUCTION 15 

in the yoke of this steady occupation was sometimes 
gaUing is shown in his private letters. To W. D. Howells 
he wrote regretfully of the time and energy given to teach- 
ing, and of his conviction that he would have been a 
better poet if he " had not estranged the muse by donning a 
professor's gown." But a good teacher always bears in 
his left hand the lamp of sacrifice. 

In 1857 Lowell was married to Miss Frances Dunlap, 
"a woman of remarkable gifts and grace of person and 
character," says Charles Eliot Norton. In the same 
year the Atlantic Monthly was launched and Lowell 
became its first editor. This position he held four years. 
Under his painstaking and wise management the mag- 
azine quickly became what it has continued to be, the 
finest representative of true literature among period- 
icals. In 1864 he joined his friend, Professor Norton, in 
the editorship of the North American Revieiv, to which he 
gave much of the distinction for w^hich this periodical 
was once so worthily famous. In this first appeared his 
masterly essays on the great poets, Chaucer, Dante, 
Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, Dryden, and the others, 
which were gathered into the three volumes. Among My 
Books, first and second series, and My Study Windows. 
Variety was given to this critical writing by such charm- 
ing essays as A Good Word for Winter and the deliciously 
caustic paper On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners. 

One of the strongest elements of Lowell's character 
was patriotism. His love of country and his native soil 
was not merely a principle, it was a passion. No Amer- 
ican author has done so much to enlarge and exalt the 
ideals of democracy. An intense interest in the welfare 
of the nation broadened the scope of his literary work 
and led him at times into active public life. During the 
Civil War he published a second series of Biglow Papers, 
in which, says Mr. Greenslet, "we feel the vital stirring 
of the mind of Lowell as it was moved by the great war; 



16 INTRODUCTION 

and if they never had quite the popular reverberation 
of the first series, they made deeper impression, and are 
a more priceless possession of our literature." When 
peace was declared in April, 1865, he wrote to Professor 
Norton: "The news, my dear Charles, is from Heaven. 
I felt a strange and tender exaltation. I wanted to 
laugh and I wanted to cry, and ended by holding my 
peace and feeling devoutly thankful. There is some- 
thing magnificent in having a country to love." On 
July 21 a solemn service was held at Harvard College 
in memory of her sons who had died in the war, in which 
Lowell gave the Commemoration Ode, a poem which is 
now regarded, not as popular, but as marking the highest 
reach of his poetic power. The famous passage character- 
izing Lincoln is unquestionably the finest tribute ever 
paid to Lincoln by an American author. 

In the presidential campaign of 1876 Lowell was ac- 
tive, making speeches, serving as delegate to the Repub- 
lican Convention, and later as Presidential Elector. 
There was even much talk of sending him to Congress. 
Through the friendly offices of Mr. Howells, who was in 
intimate personal relations with President Hayes, he 
was appointed Minister to Spain. This honor was the 
more gratifying to him because he had long been devoted 
to the Spanish literature and language, and he could 
now read his beloved Calderon with new joys. Li 1880 
he was promoted to the English mission, and during the 
next four years represented his country at the Court of 
St. James in a manner that raised him to the highest 
point of honor and esteem in both nations. His career 
in England was an extraordinary, in most respects an 
unparalleled success. He was our first official represent- 
ative to win completely the heart of the English people, 
and a great part of his permanent achievement was to 
establish more cordial relations between the two coun- 
tries. His literary reputation had prepared the ground 



INTRODUCTION 17 

for his personal popularity. He was greeted as "His 
Excellency the Ambassador of American Literature to 
the Court of Shakespeare." His fascinating personality 
won friends in every circle of society. Queen Victoria 
declared that during her long reign no ambassador had 
created so much interest or won so much regard. He 
had already been honored by degrees from Oxford and 
Cambridge, and now many similar honors were thrust 
upon him. He was acknowledged to be the best after- 
dinner speaker in England, and no one was called upon 
so often for addresses at dedications, the unveiling of 
tablets, and other civic occasions. It is not strange 
that he became attached to England with an increasing 
affection, but there was no diminution of his intense 
Americanism. His celebrated Birmingham address on 
Democracy is yet our clearest and noblest exposition of 
American political principles and ideals. 

With the inauguration of Cleveland in 1885 Lowell's 
official residence in England came to an end. He re- 
turned to America and for a time lived with his daughter 
at Deerfoot Farm. Mrs. Lowell had died in England, 
and he could not carry his sorrow back to Elmwood alone. 
He now leisurely occupied himself with literary work, 
making an occasional address upon literature or politics, 
which was always distinguished by grace and dignity of 
style and richness of thought. 

In November, 1886, he delivered the oration at the 
250th anniversary of the founding of Harvard Univer- 
sity, and, rising to the requirements of this notable occa- 
sion, he captivated his hearers, among whom were many 
distinguished delegates from the great universities of 
Europe as well as of America, by the power of his thought 
and the felicity of his expression. 

During the period of his diplomatic service he added 
almost nothing to his permanent literary product. In 
1869 he had published Under the Willows, a collection 



18 INTRODUCTION 

that contains some of his finest poems. In the same 
year The Cathedral was published, a stately poem in 
blank verse, profound in thought, with many passages 
of great poetic beauty. In 1888 a final collection of 
poems was published, entitled Heartsease and Rue, which 
opened with the memorial poem, Agassiz, an elegy that 
would not be too highly honored by being bound in a 
golden volume with Lycidas, Adonais and Thyrsis. Going 
back to his earliest literary studies, he again (1887) lec- 
tured at the Lowell Institute on the old dramatists. 
Occasionally he gave a poem to the magazines and a 
collection of these Last Poems was made in 1895 by Pro- 
fessor Norton. During these years were written many 
of the charming Letters to personal friends, which rank 
with the finest literary letters ever printed and must 
always be regarded as an important part of his prose 
works. 

It was a gracious boon of providence that Lowell was 
permitted to spend his last years at Elmwood, with his 
daughter, Mrs. Burnett, and his grandchildren. There 
again, as in the early days, he watched the orioles build- 
ing their nests and listened to the tricksy catbird's call. 
To an English friend he writes: "I watch the moon rise 
behind the same trees through which I first saw it sev- 
enty years ago and have a strange feeling of permanence, 
as if I should watch it seventy years longer." In the 
old library by the familiar fireplace he sat, when the 
shadows were playing among his beloved books, com- 
muning with the beautiful past. What unwritten poems 
of pathos and sweetness may have ministered to his 
great soul we cannot know. In 1890 a fatal disease 
came upon him, and after long and heroic endurance of 
pain he died, August 12, 1891, and under the trees of 
Mt. Auburn he rests, as in life still near his great neigh- 
bor Longfellow. In a memorial poem Oliver Wendell 
Holmes spoke for the thousands who mourned: 



INTRODUCTION 19 

" Peace to thy slumber in the forest shade, 
Poet and patriot, every gift was thine; 
Thy name shall live while summers bloom and fade 
And grateful memory guard thy leafy shrine." 

Lowell's rich and varied personality presents a type 
of cultured manhood that is the finest product of Amer- 
ican democracy. The largeness of his interests and the 
versatility of his intellectual powers give him a unique 
eminence among American authors. His genius was 
undoubtedly embarrassed by the diffusive tendency of 
his interests. He might have been a greater poet had 
he been less the reformer and statesman, and his creative 
impulses were often absorbed in the mere enjoyment of 
exercising his critical faculty. Although he achieved 
only a qualified eminence as poet, or as prose writer, yet 
because of the breadth and variety of his permanent 
achievement he must be regarded as our greatest man 
of letters. His sympathetic interest, always outflowing 
toward concrete humanity, was a quality — 

" With such large range as from the ale-house bench 
Can reach the stars and be with both at home." 

With marvelous versatility and equal ease he could talk 
with the down-east farmer and salty seamen and ex- 
change elegant compliments with old world royalty. In 
The Cathedral he says significantly: 

" I thank benignant nature most for this, — 
A force of sympathy, or call it lack 
Of character firm-planted, loosing me 
From the pent chamber of habitual self 
To dwell enlarged in alien modes of thought. 
Haply distasteful, wholesomer for that, 
And through imagination to possess. 
As they were mine, the lives of other men." 



20 INTRODUCTION 

In the delightful little poem, The Nightingale in the 
Study, we have a fanciful expression of the conflict be- 
tween Lowell's love of books and love of nature. His 
friend the catbird calls him "out beneath the unmas- 
tered sky," where the buttercups "brim with wine beyond 
all Lesbian juice." But there are ampler skies, he an- 
swers, "in Fancy's land," and the singers though dead 

so long — 

" Give its best sweetness to all song, 

To nature's self her better glory." 

His love of reading is manifest in all his work, giving to 
his style a bookishness that is sometimes excessive and 
often troublesome. His expression, though generally 
direct and clear, and happily colored by personal frank- 
ness, is often burdened with learning. To be able to 
read his essays with full appreciation is in itself evidence 
of a liberal education. His scholarship was broad and 
profound, but it was not scholarship in the German 
sense, exhaustive and exhausting. He studied for the 
joy of knowing, never for the purpose of being known, 
and he cared more to know the spirit and meaning of 
things than to know their causes and origins. A lan- 
guage he learned for the sake of its literature rather than 
its philology. As Mr. Brownell observes, he shows little 
interest in the large movements of the world's history. 
He seemed to prefer history as sublimated in the poet's 
song. The field of belles-lettres was his native province; 
its atmosphere was most congenial to his tastes. In 
book-land it was always June for him — 

" Springtime ne'er denied 
Indoors by vernal Chaucer, whose fresh woods 
Throb thick with merle and mavis all the year." 

But books could never divert his soul from its early 
endearments with out-of-door nature. "The older I 



INTRODUCTION 21 

grow," he says, "the more I am convinced that there 
are no satisfactions so deep and so permanent as our 
sympathies with outward nature." And in the preface 
to My Study Windows he speaks of himself as "one who 
has always found his most fruitful study in the open 
air." The most charming element of his poetry is the 
nature element that everyu^here cheers and stimulates 
the reader. It is full of sunshine and bird music. So 
genuine, spontaneous and sympathetic are his descrip- 
tions that we feel the very heart throbs of nature in his 
verse, and in the prose of such records of intimacies with 
outdoor friends as the essay. My Garden Acquaintance. 
"How I do love the earth," he exclaims. "I feel it 
thrill under my feet. I feel somehow as if it were con- 
scious of my love, as if something passed into my 
dancing blood from it." It is this sensitive nearness 
to nature that makes him a better interpreter of her 
"visible forms" than Bryant even; moreover, unlike 
Bryant he always catches the notes of joy in nature's 
voices and feels the uplift of a happy inspiration. 

In the presence of the immense popularity of Mark 
Twain, it may seem paradoxical to call Lowell our great- 
est American humorist. Yet in the refined and artistic 
qualities of humorous writing and in the genuineness of 
the native flavor his work is certainly superior to any 
other humorous writing that is likely to compete with it 
for permanent interest. Indeed, Mr. Greenslet thinks 
that "it is as the author of the Bigloiv Papers that he is 
likely to be longest remembered." The perpetual play 
of humor gave to his work, even to the last, the freshness 
of youth. We love him for his boyish love of pure fun. 
The two large volumes of his Letters are delicious reading 
because he put into them "good wholesome nonsense," 
as he says, "keeping my seriousness to bore myself 
with." 

But this sparkling and overflowing humor never ob- 



22 INTRODUCTION 

scures the deep seriousness that is the undercurrent of 
all his writing. A high idealism characterizes all his 
work. One of his greatest services to his country was 
the effort to create a saner and sounder political life. 
As he himself realized, he often moralized his work too 
much with a purposeful idealism. In middle life he said, 
"I shall never be a poet until I get out of the pulpit, and 
New England was all meeting-house w^hen I was growing 
up." In religion and philosophy he was conservative, 
deprecating the radical and scientific tendencies of the 
age, with its knife and glass — 

" That make thought physical and thrust far off 
The Heaven, so neighborly with man of old." 

The moral impulse and the poetic impulse were often 
in conflict, and much of his early poetry for this reason 
was condemned by his later judgment. His maturer 
poems are filled with deep-thoughted lines, phrases of 
high aspiration and soul-stirring ecstasies. Though his 
thought is spiritual and ideal, it is always firmly rooted 
in the experience of common humanity. All can climb 
the heights with him and catch inspiring glimpses at 
least of the ideal and the infinite. 



CRITICAL APPRECIATIONS 

"The proportion of his poetry that can be so called 
is small. But a great deal of it is very fine, very noble, 
and at times very beautiful, and it discloses the dis- 
tinctly poetic faculty of which rhythmic and figurative 
is native expression. It is impressionable rather than 
imaginative in the large sense; it is felicitous in detail 
rather than in design ; and of a general rather than indi- 
vidual, a representative rather than original, inspiration. 
There is a field of poetry, assuredly not the highest, but 



INTRODUCTION 23 

ample and admirable — in which these qualities, more or 
less unsatisfactory in prose, are legitimately and fruit- 
fully exercised. All poetry is in the realm of feeling, and 
thus less exclusively dependent on the thought that is 
the sole reliance of prose. Being genuine poetry, Lowell's 
profits by this advantage. Feeling is fitly, genuinely, 
its inspiration. Its range and limitations correspond to 
the character of his susceptibility, as those of his prose 
do to that of his thought. The fusion of the two in the 
crucible of the imagination is infrequent with him, be- 
cause with him it is the fancy rather than the imagina- 
tion that is luxuriant and highly developed. For the 
architectonics of poetry he had not the requisite reach 
and grasp, the comprehensive and constructing -vision. 
Nothing of his has any large design or effective inter- 
dependent proportions. In a technical way an exception 
should be noted in his skilful building of the ode — a 
form in which he was extremely successful and for which 
he evidently had a native aptitude. . , . Lowell's consti- 
tutes, on the whole, the most admirable American contribu- 
tion to the nature poetry of English literature — far beyond 
that of Bryant, Whittier, or Longfellow, I think, and only 
occasionally excelled here and there by the magic touch 
of Emerson." — W. C. Brownell, in Scrihner's Magazine, 
February, 1907. 

" Lowell is a poet who seems to represent New England 
more variously than either of his comrades. We find 
in his work, as in theirs, her loyalty and moral purpose. 
She has been at cost for his training, and he in turn has 
read her heart, honoring her as a mother before the 
world, and seeing beauty in her common garb and speech. 
... If Lowell be not first of all an original genius, I 
know not where to look for one. Judged by his personal 
bearing, who is brighter, more persuasive, more equal 
to the occasion than himself, — less open to Doudan's 



24 INTRODUCTION 

stricture upon writers who hoard and store up their 
thoughts for the betterment of their printed works? 
Lowell's treasury can stand the drafts of both speech and 
composition. Judged by his works, as a poet in the end 
must be, he is one who might gain by revision and com- 
pression. But think, as is his due, upon the high-water 
marks of his abundant tide, and see how enviable the 
record of a poet who is our most brilliant and learned 
critic, and who has given us our best native idyll, our 
best and most complete work in dialectic verse, and the 
noblest heroic ode that America has produced — each 
and all ranking with the first of their kinds in English 
literature of the modern time." — Edmund Clarence 
Stedman. 

As a racy humorist and a brilliant wit using verse as 
an instrument of expression, he has no clear superior, 
probably no equal, so far at least as American readers 
are concerned, among writers w^ho have employed 
the English language. As a satirist he has superiors, 
but scarcely as an inventor of jeux d 'esprit. As a patriotic 
lyrist he has few equals and very few superiors in what 
is probably the highest function of such a poet — that 
of stimulating to a noble height the national instincts of 
his countrymen. . . . The rest of his poetry may fairly 
be said to gain on that of any of his American contempo- 
raries save Poe in more sensuous rhythm, in choicer 
diction, in a more refined and subtilized imagination, and 
in a deeper, a more brooding intelligence." — Prof. 
William P. Trent. 

"In originality, in virility, in many-sidedness, Low- 
ell is the first of American poets. He not only pos- 
sessed, at times in nearly equal measure, many of the 
qualities most notable in his fellow-poets, rivaling Bry- 
ant as a painter of nature, and Holmes in pathos, having 



INTRODUCTION 25 

a touch too of Emerson's transcendentalism, and rising 
occasionally to Whittier's moral fervor, but he brought to 
all this much beside. In one vein he produced such a 
masterpiece of mingled pathos and nature painting as 
we find in the tenth Biglow letter of the second series; 
in another, such a lyric gem as The Fountain; in another, 
The First Snow-Fall and After the Burial; in another, 
again, the noble Harvard Commemoration Ode. ... He 
had plainly a most defective ear for rhythm and verbal 
harmony. Except when he confines himself to simple 
metres, we rarely find five consecutive lines which do 
not in some way jar on us. His blank verse and the ir- 
regular metres which he, unfortunately, so often employs, 
have little or no music, and are often quite intolerable. 
But after all the deductions which the most exacting 
criticism can make, it still remains that, as a serious 
poet Lowell stands high. As a painter of nature, he 
has, when at his best, few superiors, and, in his own 
country, none. Whatever be their esthetic and tech- 
nical deficiencies, he has wTitten many poems of senti- 
ment and pathos which can never fail to come home to 
all to whom such poetry appeals. His hortatory and 
didactic poetry, as it expresses itself in the Commemora- 
tion Ode, is worthy, if not of the music and felicity of 
Milton and Wordsworth, at least of their tone, when 
that tone is most exalted. As a humorist he is inimitable. 
His humor is rooted in a fine sense of the becoming, and 
in a profounder insight into the character of his country- 
men than that of any other American writer." — John 
Churton Collins. 

"He was a brilliant wit and a delightful humorist; 
a discursive essayist of unfailing charm; the best Amer- 
ican critic of his time; a scholar of wide learning, deep 
also when his interest was most engaged; a powerful 
writer on great public questions; a patriot passionately 
pure; but first, last, and always he was a poet, never so 



26 INTRODUCTION 

happy as when he was looking at the world from the 
poet's mount of vision and seeking for fit words and 
musical to tell what he had seen. But his emotion was 
not sufficiently 'recollected in tranquillity.' Had he 
been more an artist he would have been a better poet, 
for then he would have challenged the invasions of his 
literary memory, his humor, his animal spirits, within 
limits where they had no right of way. If his humor 
was his rarest, it was his most dangerous gift; so often 
did it tempt him to laugh out in some holy place. . . . 
Less charming than Longfellow, less homely than Whit- 
tier, less artistic than Holmes, less grave than Bryant, 
less vivid than Emerson, less unique than Poe, his qual- 
ities, intellectual, moral and esthetic, in their assem- 
blage and coordination assign him to a place among 
American men of letters which is only a little lower than 
that which is Emerson's and his alone." — John White 
Chadwick. 

THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 

Early in 1848 in a letter to his friend Briggs, Lowell 
speaks of The Vision of Sir Launfal as "a sort of story, 
and more likely to be popular than what I write gener- 
ally. Maria thinks very highly of it." And in another 
letter he calls it "a little narrative poem," In Decem- 
ber, 1848, it was published in a thin volume alone, and 
at once justified the poet's expectations of popularity. 
The poem was an improvisation, like that of his "musing 
organist," for it was written, we are told, almost at a 
single sitting, entirely within two days. The theme may 
have been suggested by Tennyson's Sir Galahad, but his 
familiarity with the old romances and his love of the 
mystical and symbolic sense of these good old-time tales 
were a quite ample source for such suggestion. More- 
over Lowell in his early years was much given to seeing 



INTRODUCTION 27 

visions and dreaming dreams. "During that part of 
my life/' he says, "which I hved most alone, I was never 
a single night unvisited by visions, and once I thought 
I had a personal revelation from God Himself." The 
Fairie Queen was "the first poem I ever read," he says, 
and the bosky glades of Elmwood were often trans- 
formed into an enchanted forest where the Knight of 
the Red Cross, and Una and others in medieval costume 
passed up and down before his wondering eyes. This 
medieval romanticism was a perfectly natural accom- 
paniment of his intense idealism. 

The Vision of Sir Launfal and the Fable for Critics, 
published in the same year, illustrate the two dominant 
and strikingly contrasted qualities of his nature, a con- 
trast of opposites which he himself clearly perceived. 
"I find myself very curiously compounded of two utterly 
distinct characters. One half of me is clear mystic and 
enthusiast, and the other, humorist," and he adds that 
"it would have taken very little to have made a Saint 
Francis" of him. It was the Saint Francis of New Eng- 
land, the moral and spiritual enthusiast in liO well's 
nature that produced the poem and gave it power. Thus 
we see that notwithstanding its antique style and arti- 
ficial structure, it was a perfectly direct and spontaneous 
expression of himself. 

The allegory of the Vision is ea«ly interpreted, in its 
main significance. There is nothing original in the les- 
son, the humility of true charity, and it is a common 
criticism that the moral purpose of the poem is lost 
sight of in the beautiful nature pictures. But a knowl- 
edge of the events which were commanding Lowell's 
attention at this time and quickening his native feelings 
into purposeful utterance gives to the poem a much 
deeper significance. In 1844, when the discussion over 
the annexation of Texas was going on, he wrote The 
Present Crisis, a noble appeal to his countrymen to im- 



28 INTRODUCTION 

prove and elevate their principles. During the next 
four years he was writing editorially for the Standard, the 
official organ of the Anti-Slavery Society, at the same 
time he was bringing out the Biglow Papers. In all 
these forms of expression he voiced constantly the sen- 
timent of reform, which now filled his heart like a holy 
zeal. The national disgrace of slavery rested heavily 
upon his soul. He burned with the desire to make God's 
justice prevail where man's justice had failed. In 1846 
he said in a letter, "It seems as if my heart would break 
in pouring out one glorious song that should be the gos- 
pel of Reform, full of consolation and strength to the 
oppressed, yet falling gently and restoringly as dew on 
the withered youth-flowers of the oppressor. That 
way my madness lies, if any." This passionate yearning 
for reform is embodied poetically in the Vision. In a 
broad sense, therefore, the poem is an expression of 
ideal democracy, in which equality, sympathy, and a 
sense of the common brotherhood of man are the basis 
of all ethical actions and standards. It is the Christ- 
like conception of human society that is always so allur- 
ing in the poetry and so discouraging in the prose of life. 
The following explanation appeared in the early edi- 
tions of the poem as an introductory note: 

" According to the imythology of the Romancers, the San 
Greal, or Holy Grail, was the cup out of which Jesus Christ 
partook of the last supper with his disciples. It was brought 
into England by Joseph of Ariniathea, and remained there, 
an object of pilgrimage and adoration, for many years in the 
keeping of his lineal descendants. It was incumbent upon 
those who had charge of it to be chaste in thought, word, 
and deed; but, one of the keepers having broken this condi- 
tion, the Holy Grail disappeared. From that time it was a 
favorite enterprise of the Knights of Arthur's court to go in 
search of it. Sir Galahad was at last successful in tinding 



INTRODUCTION 29 

it, as may be read in the seventeenth book of the Romance 
of King Arthur. Tennyson has made Sir Galahad the sub- 
ject of one of the most exquisite of his poems. 

" The plot (if I may give that name to anything so slight) 
of the following poem is my own, and, to serve its purposes, 
I have enlarged the circle of competition in search of the 
miraculous cup in such a manner as to include not only 
other persons than the heroes of the Round Table, but also 
a period of time subsequent to the date of King Arthur's 
reign." 

In the last sentence there is a sly suggestion of Lowell's 
playfulness. Of course every one may compete in the 
search for the Grail, and the "time subsequent to King 
Arthur's reign" includes the present time. The Ro- 
mance of King Arthur is the Morte Darthur of Sir Thomas 
Malory. Lowell's specific indebtedness to the medieval 
romances extended only to the use of the symbol of con- 
secration to some noble purpose in the search for the 
Grail, and to the name of his hero. It is a free version 
of older French romances belonging to the Arthurian 
cycle. Sir Lawifal is the title of a poem wa-itten by Sir 
Thomas Chestre in the reign of Henry VI, w^hich may 
be found in Ritson's Ancient English Metrical Romances. 
There is nothing suggestive of Lowell's poem except 
the quality of generosity in the hero, who — 

" gaf gyftys largelyche. 
Gold and sylver; and clodes ryche, 
To squyer and to knight." 

One of Lowell's earlier poems, The Search, contains 
the germ of The Vision of Sir Launfal. It represents a 
search for Christ, first in nature's fair woods and fields, 
then in the "proud w^orld" amid "power and wealth," 
and the search finally ends in "a hovel rude" where — 



30 INTRODUCTION 

" The King I sought for meekly stood; 

A naked, hungry child 

Clung round his gracious knee, 
And a poor hunted slave looked up and smiled 
To bless the smile that set him free." 

And Christ, the seeker learns, is not to be found by wan- 
dering through the world. 

" His throne is with the outcast and the weak." 

A similar fancy also is embodied in a little poem en- 
titled A Parable. Christ goes through the world to see 
''How the men, my brethren, believe in me," and he 
finds ''in church, and palace, and judgment-hall," a 
disregard for the primary principles of his teaching. 

" Have ye founded your throne and altars, then. 
On the bodies and souls of living men? 
And think ye that building shall endure, 
Which shelters the noble and crushes the poor? " 

These early poems and passages in others w^ritten at 
about the same time, taken in connection with the Vision, 
show how strongly the theme had seized upon Lowell's 
mind. 

The structure of the poem is complicated and some- 
times confusing. At the outset the student must no- 
tice that there is a story within a story. The action of 
the major story covers only a single night, and the hero 
of this story is the real Sir Launfal, who in his sleep dreams 
the minor story, the Vision. The action of this story 
covers the lifetime of the hero, the imaginary Sir Laun- 
fal, from early manhood to old age, and includes his 
wanderings in distant lands. The poem is constructed 
on the principles of contrast and parallelism. By hold- 
ing to this method of structure throughout Lowell sacri- 
ficed the important artistic element of unity, especially 



INTRODUCTION 31 

in breaking the narrative with the Prelude to the second 
part. The first Prelude describing the beauty and in- 
spiring joy of spring, typifying the buoyant youth and 
aspiring soul of Sir Launfal, corresponds to the second 
Prelude, describing the bleakness and desolation of 
winter, typifying the old age and desolated life of the 
hero. But beneath the surface of this wintry age there 
is a new soul of summer beauty, the warm love of suffer- 
ing humanity, just as beneath the surface of the frozen 
brook there is an ice-palace of summer beauty. In 
Part First the gloomy castle with its joyless interior 
stands as the only cold and forbidding thing in the land- 
scape ,''like an outpost of winter;" so in Part Second the 
same castle with Christmas joys within is the only bright 
and gladsome object in the landscape. In Part First 
the castle gates never "might opened be"; in Part 
Second the "castle gates stand open now." And thus 
the student may find various details contrasted and par- 
alleled. The symbolic meaning must be kept constantly 
in mind, or it will escape unobserved; for example, the 
cost of earthly things in comparison with the generosity 
of June corresponds to the churlish castle opposed to 
the inviting warmth of summer; and each symbolizes 
the proud, selfish, misguided heart of Sir Launfal in 
youth, in comparison with the humility and large Chris- 
tian charity in old age. The student should search for 
these symbolic hints, passages in which "more is meant 
than meets the ear," but if he does not find all that the 
poet may or may not have intended in his dreamy design, 
there need be no detraction from the enjoyment of the 
poem. 

Critical judgment upon The Vision of Sir Launfal is 
generally severe in respect to its structural faults. Mr. 
Greenslet declares that "through half a century, nine 
readers out of ten have mistaken Lowell's meaning," 
even the "numerous commentators" have "interpreted 



32 INTRODUCTION 

the poem as if the young knight actually adventured 
the quest and returned from it at the end of years, broken 
and old." This, however, must be regarded as a rather 
exaggerated estimate of the lack of unity and consistency 
in the poem. Stedman says: "I think that The Vision 
of Sir Launfal owed its success quite as much to a pres- 
entation of nature as to its misty legend. It really is a 
landscape poem, of which the lovely passage, 'And what 
is so rare as a day in June?' and the wintry prelude to 
Part Second, are the specific features." And the Eng- 
lish critic, J. Churton Collins, thinks that ''Sir Launfal, 
except for the beautiful nature pictures, scarcely rises 
above the level of an Ingoldsby Legend." 

The popular judgment of the poem (which after all is 
the important judgment) is fairly stated by Mr. Greens- 
let: "There is probably no poem in American literature 
in which a visionary faculty like that [of Lowell] is ex- 
pressed with such a firm command of poetic background 
and variety of music as in Sir Launfal ... its structure 
is far from perfect ; yet for all that it has stood the search- 
ing test of time ; it is beloved now by thousands of young 
American readers, for whom it has been a first initia- 
tion to the beauty of poetic idealism." 

While studying The Vision of Sir Launfal the student 
should be made familiar with Tennyson's Sir Galahad 
and The Holy Grail, and the libretto of Wagner's Par- 
sifal. Also Henry A. Abbey's magnificent series of mural 
paintings in the Boston Public Library, representing the 
Quest of the Holy Grail, may be utilized in the Copley 
Prints. If possible the story of Sir Galahad's search 
for the Grail in the seventeenth book of Sir Thomas 
Malory's Morte Darthur should be read. It would be 
well also to read Longfellow's King Robert of Sicily, 
which to some extent presents a likeness of motive and 
treatment. 



INTRODUCTION 33 

THE COMMEMORATION ODE 

In April, 1865, the Civil War was ended and peace was 
declared. On July 21 Harvard College held a solemn 
service in commemoration of her ninety-three sons who 
had been killed in the war. Eight of these fallen young 
heroes were of Lowell's own kindred. Personal grief 
thus added intensity to the deep passion of his utterance 
upon this great occasion. He was invited to give a 
poem, and the ode which he presented proved to be the 
supreme event of the noble service. The scene is thus 
described by Francis H. Underwood, who was in the 
audience : 

"The services took place in the open air, in the pres- 
ence of a great assembly. Prominent among the speakers 
were Major-General Meade, the hero of Gettysburg, and 
Major-General Devens. The wounds of the war were 
stiU fresh and bleeding, and the interest of the occasion 
was deep and thrilling. The summer afternoon was 
drawing to its close when the poet began the recital of 
the ode. No living audience could for the first time 
follow with intelligent appreciation the delivery of such 
a poem. To be sure, it had its obvious strong points 
and its sonorous charms; but, like all the later poems of 
the author, it is full of condensed thought and requires 
study. The reader to-day finds many passages whose 
force and beauty escaped him during the recital, but the 
effect of the poem at the time was overpowering. The 
face of the poet, alwaj^s singularly expressive, was on 
this occasion almost transfigured — glowing, as if with 
an inward light. It was impossible to look away from it. 
Our age has furnished many great historic scenes, but 
this Commemoration combined the elements of grandeur 
and pathos, and produced an impression as lasting as 
life.'' 

Of the delivery and immediate effect of the poem Mr. 



34 INTRODUCTION 

Greenslet says: "Some in the audience were thrilled and 
shaken by it, as Lowell himself was shaken in its deliv- 
ery, yet he seems to have felt with some reason that it 
was not a complete and immediate success. Nor is this 
cause for wonder. The passion of the poem was too 
ideal, its woven harmonies too subtle to be readily com- 
municated to so large an audience, mastered and mellowed 
though it was by a single deep mood. Nor was Lowell's 
elocution quite that of the deep-mouthed odist capable 
of interpreting such organ tones of verse. But no sooner 
was the poem published, with the matchless Lincoln 
strophe inserted, than its greatness and nobility were 
manifest." 

The circumstances connected with the writing of the 
ode have been described by Lowell in his private letters. 
It appears that he was reluctant to undertake the task, 
and for several weeks his mind utterly refused to respond 
to the high duty put upon it. At last the sublime thought 
came to him upon the swift wings of inspiration. "The 
ode itself," he says, "was an improvisation. Two days 
before the commemoration I had told my friend Child 
that it was impossible — that I was dull as a door-mat. 
But the next day something gave me a jog, and the 
whole thing came out of me with a rush. I sat up all 
night writing it out clear, and took it on the morning of 
the day to Child." Li another letter he says: "The poem 
was written with a vehement speed, which I thought I 
had lost in the skirts of my professor's gown. Till with- 
in two days of the celebration I was hopelessly dumb, 
and then it all came with a rush, literally making me 
lean (mi fece magro), and so nervous that I was weeks 
in getting over it." In a note in Seudder's biography 
of Lowell (Vol. II., p. 65), it is stated upon the author- 
ity of Mrs. Lowell that the poem was begun at ten o'clock 
the night before the commemoration day, and finished 
at four o'clock in the morning. "She opened her eyes 



INTRODUCTION 35 

to see him standing haggard, actually wasted by the 
stress of labor and the excitement which had carried him 
through a poem full of passion and fire, of five hundred 
and twTnty-three lines, in the space of six hours/' 

Critical estimates are essentially in accord as to the 
deep significance and permanent poetic worth of this 
poem. Greenslet, the latest biographer of Lowell, says 
that the ode, "if not his most perfect, is surely his no- 
blest and most splendid work," and adds: "Until the 
dream of human brotherhood is forgotten, the echo of 
its large music will not wholly die away." Professor 
Beers declares it to be, "although uneven, one of the 
finest occasional poems in the language, and the most 
important contribution which our Civil War has made to 
song." Of its exalted patriotism, George William Cur- 
tis says: "The patriotic heart of America throbs forever 
in Lincoln's Gettysburg address. But nowhere in lit- 
erature is there a more magnificent and majestic personi- 
fication of a country whose name is sacred to its children, 
now^here a profounder passion of patriotic loyalty, than 
in the closing lines of the Commemoration Ode. The 
American whose heart, swayed by that lofty music, 
does not thrill and palpitate with solemn joy and high 
resolve does not yet know what it is to be an American." 

With the praise of a discriminating criticism Stedman 
discusses the ode in his Poets of America: "Another 
poet w^ould have composed a less unequal ode ; no Amer- 
ican could have glorified it with braver passages, with 
whiter heat, with language and imagery so befitting im- 
passioned thought. Tried by the rule that a true poet 
is at his best with the greatest theme, Lowell's strength 
is indisputable. The ode is no smooth-cut verse from 
Pentelicus, but a mass of rugged quartz, beautiful with 
prismatic crystals, and deep veined here and there 
with virgin gold. The early strophes, though opening 
with a fine abrupt line, 'weak- winged is song,' are scarcely 



36 INTRODUCTION 

firm and incisive. Lowell had to work up to his theme. 
In the third division, 'Many loved Truth, and lavished 
life's best oil,' he struck upon a new and musical intona- 
tion of the tenderest thoughts. The quaver of this 
melodious interlude carries the ode along, until the great 
strophe is reached, — 

'Such was he, our MartjT-Chief,' 

in which the man, Abraham Lincoln, whose death had 
but just closed the national tragedy, is delineated in a 
manner that gives this poet a preeminence, among those 
who capture likeness in enduring verse, that we award 
to Velasquez among those who fasten it upon the canvas. 
'One of Plutarch's men' is before us, face to face; an 
historic character whom Lowell fully comprehended, 
and to whose height he reached in this great strophe. 
Scarcely less fine is his tearful, yet transfiguring, Avete 
to the sacred dead of the Commemoration. The weaker 
divisions of the production furnish a background to these 
passages, and at the close the poet rises with the invo- 
cation, — 

'Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found release!' 

a strain which shows that when Lowell determinedly 
sets his mouth to the trumpet, the blast is that of 
Roncesvalles." 

W. C. Brownell, the latest critic of Lowell's poetry, 
says of this poem: "The ode is too long, its evolution 
is defective, it contains verbiage, it preaches. But pas- 
sages of it — the most famous having characteristically 
been interpolated after its delivery — are equal to any- 
thing of the kind. The temptation to quote from it is 
hard to withstand. It is the cap-sheaf of Lowell's achieve- 
ment." In this ode "he reaches, if he does not through- 
out maintain, his own * clear-ethered height' and his 



INTRODUCTION 37 

verse has the elevation of ecstasy and the splendor of 
the sublime." 

The versification of this poem should be studied with 
some particularity. Of the forms of lyric expression the 
ode is the most elaborate and dignified. It is adapted 
only to lofty themes and stately occasions. Great 
liberty is allowed in the choice and arrangement of its 
meter, rhymes, and stanzaic forms, that its varied form 
and movement may follow the changing phases of the sen- 
timent and passion called forth by the theme. Lowell 
has given us an account of his own consideration of 
this matter. "My problem," he says, "was to con- 
trive a measure which should not be tedious by uniform- 
ity, which should vary with varying moods, in which 
the transitions (including those of the voice) should be 
managed without jar. I at first thought of mixed rhymed 
and blank verses of unequal measures, like those in the 
choruses of Samson Agonistes, which are in the main 
masterly. Of course, Milton deliberately departed from 
that stricter form of Greek chorus to which it was bound 
quite as much (I suspect) by the law of its musical 
accompaniment as by any sense of symmetry. I wrote 
some stanzas of the Commemoration Ode on this theory 
at first, leaving some verses without a rhyme to match. 
But my ear was better pleased when the rhyme, coming 
at a longer interval, as a far-off echo rather than instant 
reverberation, produced the same effect almost, and 
yet was gratified by unexpectedly recalling an associa- 
tion and faint reminiscence of consonance." 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Horace E. Scudder: James Russell Lowell: A Biography. 2 
vols. The standard biography. 

Ferris Greenslet: James Russell Lowell: His Life and Work. 
The latest biography (1905) and very satisfactory. 

Francis H. Underwood: James Russell Lowell: A Biograph- 
ical Sketch and Lowell the Poet and the Man. Interesting 
recollections of a personal friend and editorial associate. 

Edward Everett Hale: Lowell and His Friends. 

Edward Everett Hale, Jr.: James Russell Lowell. (Beacon 
Biographies.) 

Charles Eliot Norton: Letters of James Russell Lowell. 2 
vols. Invaluable and delightful. 

Edmund Clarence Stedman: Poets of America. 

W. C. Brownell: James Russell Lowell. (Scribner's Mag- 
azine, February, 1907.) The most recent critical es- 
timate. 

George William Curtis: James Russell Lowell: An Address. 

John Churton Collins. Studies in Poetry and Criticism, 
" Poetry and Poets of America." Excellent as an 
English estimate. 

Barrett Wendell: Literary History of America and Stelligeri, 
" Mr. Lowell as a Teacher." 

Henry James: Essays in London and Library of the World's 
Best Literature. 

George E. Wood berry: Makers of Literature. 

William Watson: Excursions in Criticism. 

W. D. Ho wells: Literary Friends and Acquaintance. 

Charles E. Richardson: American Literature. 

M. A. De Wolfe Howe: American Bookmen. 

39 



40 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Thomas Wentworth Higginson: Old Cambridge. 

Frank Preston Stearns: Cambridge Sketches. 1905. 

Richard Burton: Literary Leaders of America. 1904. 

John White Chadwick: Chambers's Cyclopedia of English 
Literature. 

Hamilton Wright Mabie: My Study Fire. Second Series, 
" Lowell's Letters." 

Margaret Fuller: Art, Literature and the Drama. 1859. 

Richard Henry Stoddard: Recollections, Personal and Lit- 
erary, " At Lowell's Fireside." 

Edwin P. Whipple: Outlooks on Society, Literature and Pol- 
itics, " Lowell as a Prose Writer." 

H. R. Haweis: American Humorists. 

Bayard Taylor: Essays and Notes. 

G. W. Smalley: London Letters, Vol. I., " Mr. Lowell, why 
the English liked him." 

THE POETS' TRIBUTES TO LOWELL 

Longfellow's Herons of Elmwood; Whittier's A Welcome to 
Lowell; Holmes's Farewell to Lowell, At a Birthday Festival, 
and To James Russell Lowell; Aldrich's Elmwood; Margaret 
J. Preston's Home-Welcome to Lowell; Richard Watson 
Gilder's Lowell; Christopher P. Cranch's To J. R. L. on His 
Fiftieth Birthday, and To J. R. L. on His Homeward Voy- 
age; James Kenneth Stephen's /n Memonam; James Russell 
Lowell, " Lapsus Calami and Other Verses " ; William W. 
Story's To James Russell Lowell, Blackwood's Magazine, 
Vol. 150; Eugene Field's James Russell Lowell; Edith 
Thomas's On Reading Lowell's ^'Heartsease and Rue." 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 

And Other Poems 

THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 

Prelude to Part First 

Over his keys the musing organist, 

Beginning doubtfully and far away, 
First lets his fingers wander as they Hst, 
And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his 
lay: 
5 Then, as the touch of his loved instrument 

Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his 
theme, 
First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent 
Along the wavering vista of his dream. 

Not only around our infancy 

10 Doth heaven with all its splendors lie; 

Daily, with souls that cringe and plot. 

We Sinais chmb and know it not. 
41 



42 THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 

Over our manhood bend the skies; 
Against our fallen and traitor lives 
15 The great winds utter prophecies; 

With our faint hearts the mountain strives; 
Its arms outstretched, the druid wood 

Waits with its benedicite; 
And to our age's drowsy blood 
20 Still shouts the inspiring sea. 

Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us; 

The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in, 
The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives 
us, 
We bargain for the graves we lie in; 
25 At the Devil's booth are all things sold. 
Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold; 

For a cap and bells our hves w^e pay. 
Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking 
'T is heaven alone that is given away, 
30 'T is only God may be had for the asking; 
No price is set on the lavish summer; 
June may be had by the poorest comer. 

And what is so rare as a day in June? 
Then, if ever, come perfect days; 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 43 

35 Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune, 
And over it softly her warm ear lays : 
Whether we look, or w^hether we listen, 
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten; 
Every clod feels a stir of might, 
40 An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 
. And, groping bhndly above it for hght, 
Chmbs to a soul in grass and flowers; 
The flush of hfe may well be seen 
Thrilhng back over hills and valleys; 
45 The cowshp startles in meadows green, 

The buttercup catches the sun in its chal- 
ice. 
And there 's never a leaf nor a blade too mean 

To be some happy creature's palace; 
The httle bird sits at his door in the sun, 
50 Atilt Hke a blossom among the leaves. 
And lets his illumined being o 'errun 

With the deluge of summer it receives; 
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings, 
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and 
sings ; 
55 He sings to the wide world, and she to her 
nest, — 



44 THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 

In the nice ear of Nature which song is the 
best? ^ 

Now is the high-tide of the year, 

And whatever of hfe hath ebbed away 
Comes flooding back, with a ripply cheer, 
GO Into every bare inlet and creek and bay; 
Now the heart is so full that a drop ovei'fills it. 
We are happy now because God wills it; 
No matter how barren the past may have been, 
T is enough for us now that the leaves are 
green ; 
65 We sit in the warrn shade and feel right well 
How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell ; 
We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help 

knowing 
That skies are clear and grass is growing; 
The breeze comes whispering in our ear 
70 That dandelions are blossoming near, 

That maize has sprouted, that streams are 
flowing, 
That the river is bluer than the sky, 
That the robin is plastering his house hard by; 
And if the breeze kept the good news back. 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 45 

75 For other couriers we slioukl not lack; 

We coukl guess it all by yon heifer's low- 
ing, — 
And hark! how clear bold chanticleer, 
Warmed with the new wine of the year, 
Tells all in his lusty crowing! 

SO Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how; 
Everything is happy now^. 

Everything is upward striving; 
'T is as easy now for the heart to be true 
As for grass to be green or skies to be blue, — 
85 T is the natural way of living : 

Who knows whither the clouds have fled? 
In the unscarred heaven they leave no 
wake; 
And the eyes forget the tears they have shed, 
The heart forgets its sorrow and ache; 
90 The soul partakes the season's youth, 

And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe 
Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth. 
Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. 
What wonder if Sir Launfal now 
95 Remembered the keeping of his vow? 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 



Part First 



''My golden spurs now bring to me, 
And bring to me my richest mail, 

For to-morrow I go over land and sea 
In search of the Holy Grail; 
100 Shall never a bed for me be spread, 

Nor shall a pillow be under my head. 

Till I begin my vow to keep; 

Here on the rushes will I sleep, 

And perchance there may come a vision true 
105 Ere day create the world anew." 

Slowly Sir Launfal's eyes grew dim, 
Slumber fell like a cloud on him. 

And into his soul the vision flew. 

II 

The crows flapped over by twos and threes, 
110 In the pool drowsed the cattle up to their 
knees, 
The Httle birds sang as if it were 
The one day of summer in all the year, 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 47 

And the very leaves seemed to sing on the 
trees : 

The castle alone in the landscape lay 
115 Like an outpost of winter, dull and gray; 

T was the proudest hall in the North Coun- 
tree, 

And never its gates might opened be, 

Save to lord or lady of high degree; 

Summer besieged it on every side, 
120 But the churlish stone her assaults defied; 

She could not scale the chilly wall, 

Though around it for leagues her paviHons tall 

Stretched left and right, 

Over the hills and out of sight; 
125 Green and broad was every tent. 
And out of each a murmur went 

Till the breeze fell off at night. 

HI 

The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang, 
And through the dark arch a charger sprang, 
130 Bearing Sir Launfal, the maiden knight. 
In his gilded mail, that flamed so bright 
It seemed the dark castle had gathered all 



48 THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 

Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over its 
wall 
In his siege of three hundred summers 
long, 
135 And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf, 
Had cast them forth : so, young and strong, 
And lightsome as a locust leaf, 
Sir Launfal flashed forth in his maiden mail, 
To seek in all cHmes for the Holy Grail. 

IV 

140 It was morning on hill and stream and tree. 
And morning in the young knight's heart; 
Only the castle moodily 
Rebuffed the gifts of the sunshine free. 
And gloomed by itself apart; 
145 The season brimmed all other things up 

Full as the rain fills the pitcher-plant's cup. 

V 

As Sir Launfal made morn through the dark- 
some gate. 
He was 'ware of a leper, crouched by the 
same. 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 49 

Who begged with his hand and moaned as he 
sate; 
150 And a loathing over Sir Launfal came; 

The sunshine went out of his soul with a thrill, 
The flesh 'neath his armor 'gan shrink and 
crawl, 
And midway its leap his heart stood still 
Like a frozen waterfall; 
155 For this man, so foul and bent of stature. 
Rasped harshly against his dainty nature, 
And seemed the one blot on the summer 

morn, — 
So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn. 

VI 

The leper raised not the gold from the dust : 
^'Better to me the poor man's crust, 
160 Better the blessing of the poor. 

Though I tui'n me empty from his door; 
That is no true alms which the hand can 

hold; 
He gives only the w^orthless gold 
165 Who gives from a sense of duty; 
But he who gives a slender mite. 



50 THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 

And gives to that which is out of sight, 

That thread of the all-sustaining Beauty 
Which runs through all and doth all unite, — 
170 The hand cannot clasp the whole of his alms, 
The heart outstretches its eager palms. 
For a god goes with it and makes it store 
To the soul that was starving in darkness be- 
fore." 

Prelude to Part Second 

Down swept the chill wind from the moun- 
tain peak, 
175 From the snow five thousand summers old; 
On open wold and hill-top bleak 

It had gathered all the cold, 
And whirled it like sleet on the wanderer's 

cheek ; 
It carried a shiver everywhere 
180 From the unleafed boughs and pastures bare; 
The little brook heard it and built a roof 
'Neath which he could house him, winter- 
proof; 
All night by the white stars' frosty gleams 
He groined his arches and matched his beams; 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 51 

185 Slender and clear were his crystal spars 
As the lashes of light that trim the stars; 
He sculptured every summer dehght 
In his halls and chambers out of sight; 
Sometimes his tinkUng waters shpt 

190 Down through a frost-leaved forest-crypt, 
Long, sparkhng aisles of steel-stemmed trees 
Bending to counterfeit a breeze; 
Sometimes the roof no fretwork knew 
But silvery mosses that downward grew; 

195 Sometimes it was carved in sharp rehef 
With quaint arabesques of ice-fern leaf; 
Sometimes it was simply smooth and clear 
For the gladness of heaven to sliine through, 

and here 
He had caught the nodding bulrush-tops 

200 And hung them thickly with diamond-drops. 
That crystalled the beams of moon and sun, 
And made a star of every one : 
No mortal builder's most rare device 
Could match this winter-palace of ice ; 

205 'T was as if every image that mirrored lay 
In his depths serene through the summer day, 
Each fleeting shadow of earth and sky, 



52 THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 

Lest the happy model should be lost, 
Had been mimicked in fairy masonry 
210 By the elfin builders of the frost. 

Within the hall are song and laughter, 

The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, 
And sprouting is every corbel and rafter 

With Hghtsome green of ivy and holly; 
215 Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide 
Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide; 
The broad flame-pennons droop and flap 

And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; 
like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, 
220 Hunted to death in its galleries blind; 
And swift little troops of silent sparks, 

Now pausing, now scattering away as in 
fear, 
Go threading the soot-forest's tangled darks 

Like herds of startled deer. 

225 But the wind without was eager and sharp. 
Of Sir Launfal's gray hair it makes a harp, 
And rattles and wrings 
The icy strings, 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 53 

Singing, in dreary monotone, 
230 A Christmas carol of its own, 

Whose burden still, as he might guess, 
Was — ''Shelterless, shelterless, shelterless!" 

The voice of the seneschal flared Hke a torch 
As he shouted the wanderer away from the 
porch, 
235 And he sat in the gateway and saw all night 
The great hall-fire, so cheery and bold, 
Through the window-slits of the castle old, 
Build out its piers of ruddy hght 
Against the drift of the cold. 

Part Second 

I 
240 There was never a leaf on bush or tree, 
The bare boughs rattled shudderingly; 
The river was dumb and could not speak. 

For the weaver Winter its shroud had spun ; 
A single crow on the tree-top bleak 
245 From his shining feathers shed off the cold 
sun; 



54 THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 

Again it was morning, but shrunk and cold, 
As if her veins were sapless and old, 
And she rose up decrepitly 
For a last dim look at earth and sea. 

II 

250 Sir Launfal turned from his own hard gate, 
For another heir in his earldom sate; 
An old, bent man, worn out and frail, 
He came back from seeking the Holy Grail; 
Little he recked of his earldom's loss, 

255 No more on his surcoat was blazoned the 
cross. 
But deep in his soul the sign he wore. 
The badge of the suffering and the poor. 

Ill 
Sir Launfal's raiment thin and spare 
Was idle mail 'gainst the barbed air, 
2G0 For it was just at the Christmas time; 
So he nuised, as he sat, of a sunnier clime, 
And sought for a shelter from cold and snow 
In the hght and warmth of long ago; 
He sees the snake-like caravan crawl 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 55 

265 'er the edge of the desert, black and small, 
Then nearer and nearer, till, one by one. 
He can count the camels in the sun. 
As over the red-hot sands they pass 
To where, in its slender necklace of grass, 

270 The Httle spring laughed and leapt in the shade. 
And with its own self Hke an infant played, 
And waved its signal of palms. 

IV 

''For Christ's sweet sake, I beg an alms;" 
The happy camels may reach the spring, 
275 But Sir Launfal sees only the grewsome thing. 
The leper, lank as the rain-blanched bone. 
That cowers beside him, a thing as lone 
And white as the ice-isles of Northern seas 
In the desolate horror of his disease. 

V 

280 And Sir Launfal said, — ''I behold in thee 
An image of Him who died on the tree; 
Thou also hast had thy crown of thorns. 
Thou also hast had the world's buffets and 
scorns, — 



56 THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 

And to thy life were not denied 
285 The wounds in the hands and feet and side: 
Mild Mary's Son, acknowledge me; 
Behold, through him, I give to thee!" 

VI 

Then the soul of the leper stood up in his eyes 
And looked at Sir Launfal, and straightway 
he 
290 Remembered in what a haughtier guise 
He had flung an alms to leprosie, 
When he girt his young Hfe up in gilded mail 
And set forth in search of the Holy Grail. 
The heart within him was ashes and dust; 
295 He parted in twain his single crust, 

He broke the ice on the streamlet's brink, 
And gave the leper to eat and drink ; 
'T was a moldy crust of coarse brown bread, 
'T was water out of a wooden bowl, — 
300 Yet with fine wheaten bread was the leper fed, 
And 't was red wine he drank with his thirsty 
soul. 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 57 

VII 

As Sir Launfal mused with a downcast face, 
A light shone round about the place; 
The leper no longer crouched at his side, 
305 But stood before him glorified, 

Shining and tall and fair and straight 

As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful 

Gate, — 
Himself the Gate whereby men can 
Enter the temple of God in Man. 

VIII 

310 His words were shed softer than leaves from 
the pine, 
And they fell on Sir Launfal as snows on the 

brine, 
That mingle their softness and quiet in one 
With the shaggy unrest they float down upon; 
And the voice that was softer than silence 
said, 
315 ^'Lo, it is I, be not afraid! 
In many climes, without avail, 
Thou hast spent thy hfe for the Holy Grail; 



58 THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 

Behold, it is here, — this cup which thou 
Didst fill at the streamlet for me but now; 

320 This crust is my body broken for thee, 
This water his blood that died on the tree; 
The Holy Supper is kept, indeed, 
In whatso we share with another's need, — 
Not what we give, but what we share, — 

325 For the gift without the giver is bare; 

Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, 
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me.' 

IX 

Sir Launfal awoke as from a swound : — 
''The Grail in my castle here is found! 
330 Hang my idle armor up on the wall, 
Let it be the spider's banquet-hall ; 
He must be fenced with stronger mail 
Who would seek and find the Holy Grail." 

X 

The castle gate stands open now, 
335 And the wanderer is welcome to the hall 
As the hangbird is to the elm-tree bough; 

No longer scowl the turrets tall. 
The Summer's long siege at last is o'er; 



THE SHEPHERD OF KING ADMETUS 59 

When the first poor outcast went in at the door, 
340 She entered with him in disguise, 

And mastered the fortress by surprise ; 

There is no spot she loves so well on ground, 

She Hngers and smiles there the whole year 
round ; 

The meanest serf on Sir LaunfaFs land 
345 Has hall and bower at his command; 

And there 's no poor man in the North Countree 

But is lord of the earldom as much as he. 



THE SHEPHERD OF KING ADMETUS 

There came a youth upon the earth. 

Some thousand years ago. 
Whose slender hands were nothing worth, 
Whether to plow, or reap, or sow. 

5 He made a lyre, and drew therefrom 
Music so strange and rich. 
That all men loved to hear, — and some 
Muttered of fagots for a witch. 

But King Admetus, one who had 
10 Pure taste by right divine. 



60 THE SHEPHERD OF KING ADMETUS 

Decreed his singing not too bad 
To hear between the cups of wine 

And so, well pleased with being soothed 
Into a sweet half-sleep, 
15 Three times his kingly beard he smoothed, 
And made him viceroy o'er his sheep. 

His words were simple words enough, 

And yet he used them so. 
That what in other mouths were rough 
20 In his seemed musical and low. 

Men called him but a shiftless youth. 

In whom no good they saw; 
And yet, unwittingly, in truth. 
They made his careless words their law. 

25 They knew not how he learned at all. 
For, long hour after hour, 
He sat and watched the dead leaves fall, 
Or mused upon a common flower. 

It seemed the loveliness of things 
30 Did teach him all their use, 



AN INCIDENT IN A RAILROAD CAR 61 

For, in mere weeds, and stones, and springs, 
He found a healing power profuse. 

Men granted that his speech was wise, 
But, when a glance they caught 
35 Of his sHm grace and woman's eyes. 

They laughed, and called him good-for-naught. 

Yet after he was dead and gone, 

And e 'en his memory dim. 
Earth seemed more sweet to hve upon, 
40 More full of love, because of him. 

And day by day more holy grew 
Each spot where he had trod. 
Till after-poets only knew 
Their first-born brother as a god. 

AN INCIDENT IN A RAILROAD CAR 

He spoke of Burns : men rude and rough 
Pressed round to hear the praise of one 

Whose heart was made of manly, simple, 
stuff, 
As homespun as their own. 



62 AN INCIDENT IN A RAILROAD CAR 

5 And, when he read, they forward leaned, 
Drinking, with eager hearts and ears. 
His brook-hke songs whom glory never weaned 
From humble smiles and tears. 

Slowly there grew a tender awe, 
10 Sunhke, o 'er faces brown and hard, 
As if in him who read they felt and saw 
Some presence of the bard. 

It was a sight for sin and wrong 
And slavish tyranny to see, 
15 A sight to make our faith more pure and 
strong 
In high humanity. 

I thought, these men will carry hence 
Promptings their former life above, 
And something of a finer reverence 
20 For beauty, truth, and love. 

God scatters love on every side. 

Freely among his children all. 
And always hearts are lying open wide, 

Wherein some grains may fall. 



AN INCIDENT IN A RAILROAD CAR 63 

25 There is no wind but soweth seeds 
Of a more true and open life, 
Which burst unlocked for, into high-souled 
deeds, 
With wayside beauty rife. 

We find within these souls of ours 
30 Some wild germs of a higher birth, 

Which in the poet's tropic heart bear flowers 
Whose fragrance fills the earth. 

Within the hearts of all men lie 
These promises of wider bliss, 
35 \^Tiich blossom into hopes that cannot die, 
In sunny hours like this. 

All that hath been majestical 

In life or death, since time began. 
Is native in the simple heart of all, 
40 The angel heart of man. 

And thus, among the untaught poor, 
Great deeds and feelings find a home. 

That cast in shadow all the golden lore 
Of classic Greece and Rome. 



04 AN INCIDENT IN A RAILROAD CAR 

45 0, mighty brother-soul of man, 

Where'er thou art, in low or high, 
Thy skyey arches with exulting span 
'er-roof infinity ! 

All thoughts that mould the age begin 
50 Deep doAvn within the primitive soul, 
And from the many slowly upward win 
To one who grasps the whole. 

In his wide brain the feeling deep 
That struggled on the many's tongue 
bb Swells to a tide of thought, whose surges leap 
'er the weak thrones of wrong. 

All thought begins in feeling, — wide 

In the great mass its base is hid. 
And, narrowing up to thought, stands glori- 
fied, 
60 A moveless pyramid. 

Nor is he far astray, who deems 

That every hope, which rises and grows 
broad 



AX INCIDENT IN A RAILROAD CAR 65 

In the world's heart, by ordered impulse 
streams 
From the great heart of God. 

65 God wills, man hopes ; in common souls 
Hope is but vague and undefined, 
Till from the poet's tongue the message rolls 
A blessing to his kind. 

Never did Poesy appear 
70 So full of heaven to me, as when 

I saw how it would pierce through pride and 
fear. 
To the fives of coarsest men. 

It may be glorious to write 

Thoughts that shall glad the two or three 
75 High souls, fike those far stars that come in 
sight 
Once in a century ; — 

But better far it is to speak 

One simple word, which now and then 
Shall waken their free nature in the weak 
80 And friendless sons of men ; 



66 • HEBE 

To write some earnest verse or line 
Which, seeking not the praise of art, 

Shall make a clearer faith and manhood shine 
In the untutored heart. 

85 He who doth this, in verse or prose. 
May be forgotten in his day. 
But surely shall be crowned at last with those 
Who live and speak for aye. 

HEBE 

I SAW the twinkle of white feet, 
I saw the flash of robes descending; 

Before her ran an influence fleet. 
That bowed my heart like barley bending. 

5 As, in bare fields, the searching bees 

Pilot to blooms beyond our finding. 

It led me on, by sweet degrees 
Joy's simple honey-cells unbinding. 

Those Graces were that seemed grim Fates; 
10 With nearer love the sky leaned o'er me; 
The long-sought Secret's golden gates 
On musical hinges swung before me. 



,T0 THE DANDELION 67 

I saw the brimmed bowl in her grasp 
Thrilhng with godhood; like a lover 
15 I sprang the proffered life to clasp ; — 
The beaker fell; the luck was over. 

The Earth has drunk the vintage up; 
What boots it patch the goblet's spUnters? 
Can Summer fill the icy cup, 
20 Whose treacherous crystal is but Winter's? 

spendthrift Haste! await the gods; 
Their nectar crowns the lips of Patience; 

Haste scatters on unthankful sods 
The immortal gift in vain hbations. 

25 Coy Hebe flies from those that woo, 

And shuns the hands would seize upon her; 

Follow thy Hfe, and she will sue 
To pour for thee the cup of honor. 

TO THE DANDELION 

Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the 

way, 
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, 



G8 TO THE DANDELION 

First pledge of blithesome May, 
Which children pluck, and, full of pride, up- 
hold, 
5 High-hearted buccaneers, o 'er joyed that they 
An Eldorado in the grass have found, 

AVhich not the rich earth's ample round 
May match in wealth — thou art more dear to 

me 
Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be. 

10 Gold such as thine ne'er drew the Spanish 
prow 
Through the primeval hush of Indian seas, 

Nor wrinkled the lean brow 
Of age, to rob the lover's heart of ease; 
'T is the Spring's largess, which she scatters 
now 
15 To rich and poor aUke, with lavish hand. 
Though most hearts never understand 
To take it at God's value, but pass by 
The offered wealth with imrewarded eye. 

Thou art my tropics and mine Italy; 
20 To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime; 



TO THE DANDELION 69 

The eyes thou givest me 
Are in the heart, and heed not space or time : 
Not in mid June the goklen-cuirassed bee 
Feels a more summer-hke, warm ravishment 
25 In the white hly's breezy tent, 

His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first 
From the dark green thy yellow circles burst. 

Then think I of deep shadows on the grass, — 
Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze, 

30 Where, as the breezes pass, 

The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways, — 
Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass, 
Or whiten in the wind, of waters blue 
That from the distance sparkle through 

35 Some woodland gap, and of a sky above. 

Where one white cloud Hke a stray lamb doth 
move. 

My childhood's earUest thoughts are Hnked 

with thee; 
The sight of thee calls back the robin's song. 
Who, from the dark old tree 
40 Beside the door, sang clearly all day long, 



70 TO THE DANDELION 

And I, secure in childish piety, 
Listened as if I heard an angel sing 

With news from Heaven, which he could 
bring 
Fresh every day to my untainted ears, 
45 When birds and flowers and I were happy 
peers. 

Thou art the type of those meek charities 
Which make up half the nobleness of life, 

Those cheap delights the wise 
Pluck from the dusty wayside of earth's strife ; 
50 Words of frank cheer, glances of friendly eyes, 
Love's smallest coin, which yet to some may 
give 

The morsel that may keep alive 
A starving heart, and teach it to behold 
Some glimpse of God where all before was cold. 

55 Thy winged seeds, whereof the winds take care, 
Are like the words of poet and of sage 
Which through the free heaven fare, 
And, now unheeded, in another age 
Take root, and to the gladdened future bear 



TO THE DANDELION 71 

60 That witness which the present would not heed, 
Bringing forth many a thought and deed, 
And, planted safely in the eternal sky, 
Bloom into stars which earth is guided by. 

Full of deep love thou art, yet not more full 
65 Than all thy common brethren of the ground, 
Wherein, were we not dull. 
Some words of highest wisdom might be found; 
Yet earnest faith from day to day may cull 
Some syllables, which, rightly joined, can make 
70 A spell to soothe life's bitterest ache. 

And ope Heaven's portals, which are near us 

still. 
Yea, nearer ever than the gates of 111. 

How like a prodigal doth nature seem. 
When thou, for all thy gold, so common art! 
75 Thou teachest me to deem 

More sacredly of every human heart, 
Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam 
Of Heaven, and could some wondrous secret 
show. 
Did we but pay the love we owe, 



72 MY LOVE 

80 And with a child's undoubting wisdom look 
On all these hving pages of God's book. 

But let me read thy lesson right or no, 
Of one good gift from thee my heart is sure; 
Old I shall never grow 
85 While thou each year dost come to keep me 
pure 
With legends of my childhood; ah, we owe 
Well more than half life's holiness to these 

Nature's first lowly influences. 
At thought of w^hich the heart's glad doors 
burst ope, 
90 In dreariest days, to welcome peace and hope. 

MY LOVE 

Not as all other women are 

Is she that to my soul is dear; 
Her glorious fancies come from far, 
Beneath the silver evening-star, 
5 And yet her heart is ever near. 

Great feelings hath she of her own. 
Which lesser souls may never know; 



MY LOVE 73 

God givetli them to her alone, 
And sweet they are as any tone 
10 Wherewith the wind may choose to blow. 

Yet in herself she dwelleth not, 

Although no home were half so fair; 
No simplest duty is forgot, 
Life hath no dim and lowly spot 
15 That doth not in her sunshine share. 

She doeth little kindnesses. 

Which most leave undone, or despise; 
For naught that sets one heart at ease, 
And giveth happiness or peace, 
20 Is low-esteemed in her eyes. 

She hath no scorn of common things. 

And, though she seem of other birth, 
Round us her heart entwines and clings, 
And patiently she folds her wings 
25 To tread the humble paths of earth. 

Blessing she is : God made her so. 
And deeds of week-day holiness 



74 MY LOVE 

Fall from her noiseless as the snow, 
Nor hath she ever chanced to know 
30 That aught were easier than to bless. 

She is most fair, and thereunto 

Her Ufe doth rightly harmonize; 
FeeHng or thought that was not true 
Ne 'er made less beautiful the blue 
35 Unclouded heaven of her eyes. 

She is a woman : one in whom 

The spring-time of her childish years 
Hath never lost its fresh perfume. 
Though knowing well that life hath room 
40 For many blights and many tears. 

I love her with a love as still 

As a broad river's peaceful might, 
Which, by high tower and lowly mill, 
Goes wandering at its ow^n will, 
45 And yet doth ever flow aright. 

And, on its full, deep breast serene, 

Like quiet isles my duties lie; 
It flows around them and between. 



THE CHANGELING 75 

And makes them fresh and fair and green, 
50 Sweet homes wherein to hve and die. 



THE CHANGELING 

I HAD a httle daughter, 

And she was given to me 
To lead me gently backward 

To the Heavenly Father's knee, 
5 That I, by the force of nature, 

Might in some dim wise divine 
The depth of his infinite patience 

To this wayward soul of mine. 

I know not how others saw her, 
10 But to me she was wholly fair, 

And the light of the heaven she came from 

Still hngered and gleamed in her hair; 
For it was as wavy and golden. 
And as many changes took, 
15 As the shadows of sun-gilt ripples 
On the yellow bed of a brook. 

To what can I liken her smiling 
Upon me, her kneeling lover ? 



76 THE CHANGELING 

How it leaped from her lips to her eyelids, 
20 And dimpled her wholly over, 

Till her outstretched hands smiled also, 

And I almost seemed to see 
The very heart of her mother 

Sending sun through her veins to me! 

25 She had been with us scarce a twelve-month, 
And it hardly seemed a day, 
When a troop of wandering angels 

Stole my little daughter away; 
Or perhaps those heavenly Zingari 
30 But loosed the hampering strings, 

And when they had opened her cage-door, 
My little bird used her wings. 

But they left in her stead a changeling, 
A little angel child, 
35 That seems hke her bud in full blossom. 
And smiles as she never smiled : 
When I wake in the morning, I see it 

Where she always used to lie, 
And I feel as weak as a violet 
40 Alone 'neath the aw^ful sky. 



AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 77 

As weak, yet as trustful also; 

For the whole year long I see 
All the wonders of faithful Nature 

Still worked for the love of nie ; 
45 Winds wander, and dews drip earthward. 

Rain falls, suns rise and set, 
Earth whirls, and all but to prosper 

A poor little violet. 

This child is not mine as the first w^as, 
50 I cannot sing it to rest, 
I cannot hft it up fatherly 

And bhss it upon my breast ; 
Yet it lies in my httle one's cradle 
And sits in my little one's chair, 
55 And the light of the heaven she's gone to 
Transfigures its golden hair. 

AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 

What visionary tints the year puts on. 
When falling leaves falter through motion- 
less air 

Or numbly cling and shiver to be gone ! 
How shimmer the low flats and pastures bare, 



78 AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 

5 As with her nectar Hebe Autumn fills 

The bowl between me and those distant 
hills, 
And smiles and shakes abroad her misty, 
tremulous hair! 

No more the landscape holds its wealth 
apart, 
Making me poorer in my poverty, 
10 But mingles with my senses and my 

heart; 
My own projected spirit seems to me 
In her own reverie the world to steep; 
'T is she that waves to sympathetic 
sleep. 
Moving, as she is moved, each field and hill 
and tree. 

15 How fuse and mix, with what unfelt 

degrees. 
Clasped by the faint horizon's languid arms, 

Each into each, the hazy distances ! 
The softened season all the landscape charms; 
Those hills, my native village that embay, 



AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 79 

20 In waves of dreamier purple roll away, 

And floating in mirage seem all the glimmering 
farms. 

Far distant sounds the hidden chickadee 
Close at my side; far distant sound the 
leaves ; 
The fields seem fields of dream, where 
Memory 
25 Wanders hke gleaning Ruth; and as the 
sheaves 
Of wheat and barley wavered in the eye 
Of Boaz as the maiden's glow went by. 
So tremble and seem remote all things the 
sense receives. 

The cock's shrill trump that tells of scat- 
tered corn, 
30 Passed breezily on by all his flapping mates. 
Faint and more faint, from barn to barn 
is borne. 
Southward, perhaps to far Magellan's Straits; 
Dimly I catch the throb of distant flails; 
Silentlv overhead the hen-hawk sails. 



80 AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 

35 With watchful, measuring eye, and for his 
quarry waits. 

The sobered robin, hunger-silent now, 
Seeks cedar-berries blue, his autumn cheer; 
The chipmunk, on the shingly shagbark's 
bough," 
Now saws, now hsts with downward eye and 
ear, 
40 Then drops his nut, and, cheeping, with a 

bound 
Whisks to his winding fastness under- 
ground ; 
The clouds like swans drift down the stream- 
ing atmosphere. 

O'er yon bare knoll the pointed cedar 
shadows 
Drowse on the crisp, gray moss; the plough- 
man's call 
45 Creeps faint as smoke from black, fresh- 

furrowed meadows; 
The single crow a single caw lets fall; 
And all around me every bush and tree 



AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 81 

Says Autumn's here, and Winter soon 
will be, 
Who snows his soft, white sleep and silence 
over all. 

50 The birch, most shy and ladyhke of trees, 

Her poverty, as best she may, retrieves. 
And hints at her foregone gen tih ties 
With some saved relics of her wealth of 
leaves ; 
The swamp-oak, with his royal purple on, 
55 Glares red as blood across the sinking sun, 

As one who proudUer to a falling fortune 
cleaves. 

He looks a sachem, in red blanket wrapt. 
Who, 'mid some council of the sad-garbed 
whites. 
Erect and stern, in his own memories lapt, 
60 With distant eye broods over other sights. 
Sees the hushed wood the city's flare re- 
place, 
The wounded turf heal o'er the railway's 
trace, 



82 AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 

And roams the savage Past of his undwindled 
rights. 

The red-oak, softer-grained, yields all for 
lost, 
65 And, with his crumpled fohage stiff and dry, 
After the first betrayal of the frost, 
Rebuffs the kiss of the relenting sky; 
The chestnuts, lavish of their long-hid 

gold. 
To the faint Summer, beggared now and 
old, 
70 Pour back the sunshine hoarded 'neath her 
favoring eye. 

The ash her purple drops forgivingly 
And sadly, breaking not the general hush; 

The maple-swamps glow like a sunset sea, 
Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush; 
75 All round the wood's edge creeps the 

skirting blaze 
Of bushes low, as when, on cloudy days. 
Ere the rain falls, the cautious farmer burns 
his brush. 



AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 83 

O'er yon low wall, which guards one un- 
kempt zone, 
Where vines and weeds and scrub-oaks 
intertwine 
80 Safe from the plough, whose rough, dis- 

cordant stone 
Is massed to one soft gray by lichens fine. 
The tangled blackberry, crossed and re- 
crossed, weaves 
A prickly network of ensanguined leaves; 
Hard by, with coral beads, the prim black- 
alders shine. 

85 Pillaring with flame this crumbling bound- 

ary, 
Whose loose blocks topple 'neath the plough- 
boy's foot. 
Who, with each sense shut fast except 
the eye. 
Creeps close and scares the jay he hoped to 
shoot. 
The woodbine up the elm's straight stem 
aspires, 
9Q Coihng it, harmless, with autumnal fires; 



84 AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 

In the ivy's paler blaze the martyr oak staiiels 
mute. 

Below, the Charles, a stripe of nether sky. 
Now hid by rounded apple-trees between. 
Whose gaps the misplaced sail sweeps 
bellying by, 
95 Now flickering golden through a woodland 
screen. 
Then spreading out, at his next turn be- 
yond, 
A silver circle like an inland pond — 
Slips seaward silently through marshes purple 
and green. 

Dear marshes! vain to him the gift of 
sight 
100 Who cannot in their various incomes share. 
From every season drawn, of shade and 
light. 
Who sees in thorn but levels l)rown and 
bare; 
Each change of storm or sunshine scatters 
free 



AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 85 

On them its largess of variety, 
105 For Nature with cheap means still works her 
wonders rare. 

In spring they lie one broad expanse of 
green, 
'er which the light winds run with glimmer- 
ing feet : 
Here, yellower stripes track out the creek 
unseen. 
There, darker growths o'er hidden ditches 
meet; 
110 And purpler stains show where the blos- 

soms crowd. 
As if the silent shadow of a cloud 
Hung there becalmed, with the next breath 
to fleet. 

All round, upon the river's slippery edge. 
Witching to deeper calm the drowsy tide, 
115 Whispers and leans the breeze-entangUng 

sedge ; 
Through emerald glooms the lingering 
waters shde, 



86 AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 

Or, sometimes wavering, throw back the 

sun, 
And the stiff banks in eddies melt and 
run 
Of dimphng Hght, and with the current seem 
to ghde. 

120 In summer 't is a bhthesome sight to see. 

As, step by step, with measured swing, 
they pass, 
The wide-ranked mowers wading to the 
knee, 
Their sharp scythes panting through the 
wiry grass; 
Then, stretched beneath a rick's shade in 
a ring, 
125 Their nooning take, while one begins to 

sing 
A stave that droops and dies 'neath the close 
sky of brass. 

Meanwhile that devil-may-care, the bobo- 
link. 
Remembering duty, in mid-quaver stops 



AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 87 

Just ere he sweeps o'er rapture's tremu- 
lous brink, 
130 And 'twixt the winrows most demurely drops, 
A decorous bird of business, who provides 
For his brown mate and fledglings six 
besides, 
And looks from right to left, a farmer 'mid 
his crops. 

Another change subdues them in the fall, 
135 But saddens not; they still show merrier 
tints. 
Though sober russet seems to cover all; 
When the first sunshine through their dew- 
drops glints. 
Look how the yellow clearness, streamed 

across, 
Redeems with rarer hues the season's loss, 
140 As Dawn's feet there had touched and left 
their rosy prints. 

Or come when sunset gives its freshened 
zest. 
Lean o 'er the bridge and let the ruddy thrill. 



88 AN INDIAN^UMMER REVERIE 

While the shorn suii swells down the hazy 
west, 
Glow opposite; — the marshes drink their fill 
145 And swoon with purple veins, then slowly 

fade 
Through pink to brown, as eastward moves 
the shade, 
Lengthening with stealthy creep, of Simond's 
darkening hill. 

Later, and yet ere winter wholly shuts, 
Ere through the first dry snow the runner 
grates, 
150 And the loath cart-wheel screams in slip- 

pery ruts. 
While firmer ice the eager boy awaits. 

Trying each buckle and strap beside the 

fire, 
And until bedtime plays with his desire. 
Twenty times putting on and off his new- 
bought skates; — 

155 Then, every morn, the river's banks shine 

bright 



AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 89 

With smooth plate-armor, treacherous and 
frail, 
By the frost's clinking hammers forged at 
night, 
'Gainst which the lances of the sun prevail. 
Giving a pretty emblem of the day 
160 When guiltier arms in hght shall melt 

away. 
And states shall move free-limbed, loosed from 
war's cramping mail. 

And now those waterfalls the ebbing river 
Twice every day creates on either side 
Tinkle, as through their fresh-sparred 
grots they shiver 
165 In grass-arched channels to the sun denied; 
High flaps in sparkling blue the far- 
heard crow. 
The silvered fiats gleam frostily below, 
Suddenly drops the gull and breaks the glassy 
tide. 

But crowned in turn by vying seasons 
three. 



90 AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 

170 Their winter halo hath a fuller ring; 

This glory seems to rest immovably, — 
The others were too fleet and vanishing; 
When the hid tide is at its highest flow, 
O'er marsh and stream one breathless 
trance of snow 
175 With brooding fulness awes and hushes every- 
thing. 

The sunshine seems blown off by the 
bleak wind, 
As pale as formal candles lit by day; 

Gropes to the sea the river dumb and 
blind; 
The brown ricks, snow-thatched by the 
storm in play, 
180 Show pearly breakers combing o'er their 

lee. 
White crests as of some just enchanted sea, 
Checked in their maddest leap and hanging 
poised midway. 

But when the eastern blow, with rain 
aslant. 



AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 91 

From mid-sea's prairies green and rolling 
plains 
185 Drives in his wallowing herds of billows 

gaunt, 
And the roused Charles remembers in his 
veins 
Old Ocean's blood and snaps his gyves of 

frost, 
That tyrannous silence on the shores is 
tost 
In dreary wreck, and crumbUng desolation 
reigns. 

190 Edgewise or flat, in Druid-hke device. 

With leaden pools between or gulHes bare. 
The blocks lie strewn, a bleak Stonehenge 
of ice; 
No Hfe, no sound, to break the grim despair. 
Save sullen plunge, as through the sedges 
stiff 
195 Down crackles riverward some thaw- 

sapped cliff. 
Or when the close-wedged fields of ice crunch 
here and there. 



92 AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 

But let me turn from fancy-pictured scenes 
To that whose pastoral calm before me lies: 
Here nothing harsh or rugged intervenes; 
200 The early evening with her misty dyes 

Smooths ofT the ravelled edges of the nigh, 
Relieves the distant with her cooler sky, 
And tones the landscape down, and soothes 
the wearied eyes. 

There gleams my native village, dear to 
me, 
205 Though higher change's waves each day are 
seen. 
Whelming fields famed in boyhood's his- 
tory. 
Sanding with houses the diminished green; 
There, in red brick, which softening time 

defies. 
Stand square and stiff the Muses' fac- 
tories; — 
210 How with my life knit up is every well-known 
scene! 

Flow on, dear river! not alone you flow 



.l.V INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 93 

To outward sight, and through your marshes 
wind ; 
Fed from the mystic springs of long-ago, 
Your twin flows silent through my world of 
mind : 
215 Grow dim, dear marshes, in the evening's 

gray! 

Before my inner sight ye stretch away, 
And will forever, though these fleshly eyes 
grow bhnd. 

Beyond the hillock's house-bespotted swell. 
Where Gothic chapels house the horse and 
chaise, 
220 Where quiet cits in Grecian temples dwell. 

Where Coptic tombs resound with prayer 
and praise, 
Where dust-and mud the equal year divide, 
There gentle Allston Uved, and wrought, 
and died, 
Transfiguring street and shop with his illu- 
mined gaze. 

225 Virgilium vidi tanUim, — I have seen 



94 AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 

But as a boy, who looks alike on all, 
That misty hair, that fine Undine-like 
mien, 
Tremulous as down to feeling's faintest call; — 
Ah, dear old homestead! count it to thy 
fame 
230 That thither many times the Painter 

came ; — 
One elm yet bears his name, a feathery tree 
and tall. 

Swiftly the present fades in memory's 
glow, — 
Our only sure possession is the past; 

The village blacksmith died a month ago, 
235 And dim to me the forge's roaring blast; 
Soon fire-new medievals we shall see 
Oust the black smithy from its chestnut- 
tree. 
And that hewn down, perhaps, the bee-hive 
green and vast. 

How many times, prouder than king on 
throne, 



AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 95 

240 Loosed from the village school-dame's A's 

and B's, 

Panting have I the creaky bellows blown, 

And watched the pent volcano's red increase, 

Then paused to see the ponderous sledge, 

brought down 
By that hard arm voluminous and brown, 
245 From the white iron swarm its golden van- 
ishing bees. 

Dear native town! whose choking elms 
each year 
With eddying dust before their time turn 
gray, 
Pining for rain, — to me thy dust is 
dear ; 
It glorifies the eve of summer day, 
250 And when the westering sun half sunken 

burns. 
The mote-thick air to deepest orange turns. 
The westward horseman rides through clouds 
of gold away. 

So palpable, I've seen those unshorn few. 



96 ^A' INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 

The six old willows at the causey's end 
255 (Such trees Paul Potter never dreamed 

nor drew), 
Through this dry mist their checkering 
shadows send, 
Striped, here and there, with many a 

long-drawn thread. 
Where streamed through leafy chinks the 
trembhng red. 
Past which, in one bright trail, the hang- 
bird's flashes blend. 

260 Yes, dearer far thy dust than all that e 'er, 

Beneath the awarded crown of victory, 

Gilded the blown Olympic charioteer; 
Though lightly prized the ribboned parch- 
ments three. 
Yet collegisse juvat, I am glad 
265 That here what colleging was mine I 

had, — 
It linked another tie, dear native town, with 
thee! 

Nearer art thou than simply native earth, 



THE OAK 97 

My dust with thine concedes a deeper tie; 

A closer claim thy soil may well put forth, 

270 Something of kindred more than sympathy; 

For in thy bounds I reverently laid away 

That bUnding anguish of forsaken clay, 

That title I seemed to have in earth and sea 

and sky, 

That portion of my life more choice to 
me 
275 (Though brief, yet in itself so round and 
whole) 
Than all the imperfect residue can be; — 
The Artist saw his statue of the soul 

Was perfect; so, with one regretful stroke, 
The earthen model into fragments broke, 
280 And without her the impoverished seasons 
roll. 

THE OAK 

What gnarled stretch, what depth of shade, 
is his! 
There needs no crown to mark the forest's 
king; 



98 THE OAK 

How in his leaves outshines full summer's bliss ! 
Sun, storm, rain, dew, to him their tribute 
bring, 
5 Which he with such benignant royalty 
Accepts, as overpayeth what is lent; 
All nature seems his vassal proud to be, 
And cunning only for his ornament. 

How towers he, too, amid the billowed snows, 
10 An unquelled exile from the summer's throne. 
Whose plain, uncinctured front more kingly 
shows. 
Now that the obscuring courtier leaves are 
flown. 
His boughs make music of the winter air, 
Jewelled with sleet, like some cathedral 
front 
15 Where chnging snow-flakes with quaint art 
repair 
The dents and furrows of time's envious 
brunt. 

How doth his patient strength the rude March 
wind 



THE OAK 99 

Persuade to seem glad breaths of summer 
breeze. 
And win the soil, that fain would be unkind, 
20 To swell his revenues with proud increase! 
He is the gem; and all the landscape wide 

(So doth his grandem' isolate the sense) 
Seems but the setting, worthless all beside, 
An empty socket, were he fallen thence. 

25 So, from oft converse with Hfe's wintry gales. 
Should man learn how to clasp with tougher 
roots 
The inspiring earth; how otherwise avails 

The leaf-creating sap that sunward shoots? 
So every year that falls with noiseless flake 
30 Should fill old scars up on the stormward side. 
And make hoar age revered for age's sake, 
Not for traditions of youth's leafy pride. 

So, from the pinched soil of a churhsh fate. 
True hearts compel the sap of sturdier 
growth, 
35 So between earth and heaven stand simply 
great. 



100 BEAVER BROOK 

That these shall seem but their attendants 
both; 
For nature's forces with obedient zeal 

Wait on the rooted faith and oaken will; 
As quickly the pretender's cheat they feel, 
40 And turn mad Pucks to flout and mock 
him still. 

Lord! all Thy works are lessons; each contains 
Some emblem of man's all-containing soul; 
Shall he make fruitless all thy glorious pains, 
Delving within thy grace an eyeless mole? 
45 Make me the least of thy Dodona-grove, 

Cause me some message of thy truth to bring, 
Speak but a word through me, nor let thy 
love 
Among my boughs disdain to perch and 
sing. 

BEAVER BROOK 

Hushed with broad sunhght lies the hill, 
And, minuting the long day's loss. 
The cedar's shadow, slow and still, 
Creeps o 'er its dial of gray moss. 



BEAVER BROOK 101 

5 Warm noon brims full the valley's cup, 
The aspen's leaves are scarce astir; 
. Only the little mill sends up 
Its busy, never-ceasing burr. 

Climbing the loose-piled wall that hems 
10 The road along the mill-pond's brink, 
From 'neath the arching barberry-stems 
My footstep scares the shy chewink. 

Beneath a bony buttonwood 
The mill's red door lets forth the din; 
15 The whitened miller, dust-imbued, 
Flits past the square of dark within. 

No mountain torrent's strength is here; 
Sweet Beaver, child of forest still. 
Heaps its small pitcher to the ear, 
20 And gently waits the miller's mil. 

Swift slips Undine along the race 
Unheard, and then, with flashing bound. 
Floods the dull wheel with light and grace. 
And, laughing, hunts the loath drudge round. 



102 BEAVER BROOK 

25 The miller dreams not at what cost 

The quivering millstones hum and whirl, 
Nor how for every turn are tost 
Armfuls of diamond and of pearl. 

But Summer cleared my happier eyes 
30 With drops of some celestial juice, 
To see how Beauty underlies, 
Forevermore each form of use. 

And more; me thought I saw that flood, 
Which now so dull and darkling steals, 
35 Thick, here and there, with human blood, 
To turn the world's laborious wheels. 

No more than doth the miller there, 
Shut in our several cells, do we 
Know with what waste of beauty rare 
40 Moves every day's machinery. 

Surely the wiser time shall come 
When this fine overplus of might, 
No longer sullen, slow, and dumb. 
Shall leap to music and to light. 



THE PRESENT CRISIS 103 

45 In that new childhood of the Earth 
Life of itself shall dance and play, 
Fresh blood in Time's shrunk veins make 

mirth, 
And labor meet dehght half-way. 

THE PRESENT CRISIS 

When a deed is done for Freedom, through 

the broad earth's aching breast 
Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembUng on 

from east to west. 
And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the 

soul within him climb 
To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy 

subUme 
5 Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the 

thorny stem of Time. 

Through the walls of hut and palace shoots 
the instantaneous throe, 

When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's 
systems to and fro; 

At the birth of each new Era, with a recog- 
nizing start. 



104 THE PRESENT CRISIS 

Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with 
mute lips apart, 
10 And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps 
beneath the Future's heart. 

So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror 
and a chill, 

Under continent to continent, the sense of com- 
ing ill, 

And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his 
sympathies with God 

In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be 
drunk up by the sod, 
15 Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving 
in the nobler clod. 

For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct 
bears along, 

Round the earth's electric circle, the swift 
flash of right or wrong; 

Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Human- 
ity's vast frame 

Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the 
gush of joy or shame; — 



THE PRESENT CRISIS 105 

20 In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have 
equal claim. 

Once to every man and nation comes the 
moment to decide, 

In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the 
good or evil side; 

Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offer- 
ing each the bloom or blight. 

Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the 
sheep upon the right, 
25 And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that 
darkness and that hght. 

Hast thou chosen, my people, on whose 

party thou shalt stand, 
Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes 

the dust against our land? 
Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 't is 

Truth alone is strong. 
And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see 

around her throng 
30 Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield 

her from all wrong. 



106 THE PRESENT CRISIS 

Backward look across the ages and the beacon- 
moments see, 

That, hke peaks of some sunk continent, jut 
through ObHvion's sea; 

Not an ear in court or market for the low 
foreboding cry 

Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from 
whose feet earth's chaff must fly; 
35 Never shows the choice momentous till the 
judgment hath passed by. 

Careless seems the great Avenger; history's 
pages but record 

One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old 
systems and the Word; 

Truth forever on the scaffold. Wrong forever 
on the Throne, — 

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, be- 
hind the dim unknown, 
40 Standeth God within the shadow, keeping 
watch above his own. 

We see dimly in the Present what is small 
and what is great, 



THE PRESENT CRISIS 107 

Slow of faith how weak an arm may tmri the 
iron helm of fate, 

But the soul is still oracular; amid the mar- 
ket's din, 

List the ominous stern whisper from the Del- 
phic cave within, — 
45 ^'They enslave their children's children who 
make compromise with sin." 

Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellest of the 
giant brood, 

Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who 
have drenched the earth with blood, 

Famished in his self-made desert, Winded by 
our purer day, 

Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his mis- 
erable prey; — 
50 Shall we guide liis gory fingers where our 
helpless children play? 

Then to side with Truth is noble when we 

share her wretched crust. 
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is 

prosperous to be just; 



108 THE PRESENT CRISIS 

Then it is the brave man chooses, while the 

coward stands aside, 
Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is 

crucified, 
55 And the multitude make virtue of the faith 

they had denied. 

Count me o 'er earth's chosen heroes, — they 

were souls that stood alone, 
While the men they agonized for hurled the 

contumelious stone. 
Stood serene, and down the future saw the 

golden beam incline 
To the side of perfect justice, mastered by 

their faith divine, 
60 By one man's plain truth to manhood and to 

God's supreme design. 

By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleed- 
ing feet I track. 

Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross 
that turns not back. 

And these mounts of anguish number how 
each generation learned 



THE PRESENT CRISIS 109 

One new word of that grand Credo which in 
prophet-hearts hath burned 
65 Since the first man stood God-conquered with 
his face to heaven upturned. 

For Humanity sweeps onward: where to-day 

the martyr stands, 
On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver 

in his hands; 
Far in front the cross stands ready and the 

crackHng fagots burn, 
While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent 

awe return 
70 To glean up the scattered ashes into History's 

golden urn. 

'T is as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle 
slaves 

Of a legendary virtue carved upon our fathers' 
graves; 

Worshippers of light ancestral make the pres- 
ent fight a crime ; — 

Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, 
steered by men behind their time? 



110 THE PRESENT CRISIS 

75 Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, 
that make Plymouth Rock sublime? 

They were men of present valor, stalwart old 
iconoclasts. 

Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue 
was the Past's; 

But we make their truth our falsehood, think- 
ing that hath made us free. 

Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our 
tender spirits flee 
80 The rude grasp of that great Impulse which 
drove them across the sea. 

They have rights who dare maintain them; 
we are traitors to our sires, 

Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's 
new-lit altar-fires; 

Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall 
we, in our haste to slay. 

From the tombs of the old prophets steal the 
funeral lamps away 
85 To light up the martyr-fagots round the pro- 
phets of to-day? 



THE COURT IN' 111 

New occasions teach new duties; Time makes 
ancient good uncouth; 

They must upward still, and onward, who 
would keep abreast of Truth; 

Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we our- 
selves must Pilgrims be. 

Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly 
through the desperate winter sea, 
90 Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's 
blood-rusted key. 

THE COURTIN' 

God makes sech nights, all white an' still 

Fur 'z you can look or Usten, 
Moonshine an' snow on field an' hill, 

All silence an' all gUsten. 

5 Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown 
An' peeked in thru' the winder, 
An' there sot Huldy all alone. 
With no one nigh to hender. 

A fireplace filled the room's one side 
10 With half a cord o' wood in, — 



112 THE COURT IN' 

There warn't no stoves till comfort died, 
To bake ye to a puddin'. 

The wa'nut logs shot sparkles out 
Toward the pootiest, bless her! 
15 An' lee tie flames danced all about 
The chiny on the dresser. 

Agin the chimbley crook-necks hung, 

An' in amongst 'em rusted 
The ole queen's-arm thet gran'ther Young 
20 Fetched back from Concord busted. 

The very room, coz she was in. 
Seemed warm from floor to ceihn', 

An' she looked full ez rosy agin 
Ez the apples she was peehn'. 

25 'T was kin' o' kingdom-come to look 
On sech a blessed cretur, 
A dogrose blushin' to a brook 
Ain't modester nor sweeter. 

He was six foot o' man, A 1, 
30 Clearn grit an' human natur'; 



THE COURT IN' 113 

None could n't quicker pitch a ton 
Nor dror a furrer straighter. 

He'd sparked it with full twenty gals, 
Hed squired 'em, danced 'em, druv 'em, 
35 Fust this one, an' then thet, by spells, — 
All is, he could n't love 'em. 

But long o' her his veins 'ould run 

All crinkly like curled maple. 
The side she breshed felt full o' sun 
40 Ez a south slope in Ap'il. 

She thought no v'ice hed sech a swing 

Ez hisn in the choir; 
My! when he made Ole Hunderd ring. 

She knowed the Lord was nigher. 

45 An' she'd blush scarHt, right in prayer, 
When her new meetin '-bunnet 
Felt somehow thru' its crown a pair 
0' blue eyes sot upon it. 

Thet night, I tell ye, she looked some! 
50 She seemed to 've gut a new soul. 



114 THE COURTIN' 

For she felt sartin-sure he'd come. 
Down to her very shoe-sole. 

She heerecl a foot, an' knowed it tu, 
A-raspin' on the scraper, — 
55 All ways to once her feelins flew 
Like sparks in burnt-up paper. 

He kin'o' I'itered on the mat, 
Some doubtfle o' the sekle, 
His heart kep' goin' pity-pat, 
60 But hern went pity Zekle. 

An' yit she gin her cheer a jerk 
Ez though she wished him furder, 

An' on her apples kep' to work, 
Parin' away like nmrder. 

65 ^^You want to see my Pa, I s'pose?" 

''Wal ... no ... I come designin'" 
''To see my Ma? She's sprinkHn' clo'es 
Agin to-morrer's i'nin'." 

To say why gals acts so or so, 
70 Or don't, would be presumin' ; 



THE COURTIN' 115 

Mebby to mean yes an' say no 
Comes nateral to women. 

He stood a spell on one foot fust, 
Then stood a spell on t'other, 
75 An' on which one he felt the Avust 
He could n't ha' told ye nuther. 

Says he, ''I'd better call agin;" 

Says she, ''Think Ukely, Mister:" 
That last word pricked him like a pin, 
80 An' . . . Wal, he up an' kist her. 

When Ma bimeby upon 'em shps, 

Huldy sot pale ez ashes, 
All kin' o' smily roun' the lips 

An' teary roun' the lashes. 

85 For she was jist the quiet kind 
Whose naturs never vary, 
Like streams that keep a summer mind 
Snowhid in Jenooary. 

The blood clost roun' her heart felt glued 
90 Too tight for all expressin', 



116 ODE RECITED AT HARVARD COMMEMORATION 

Tell mother see how metiers stood, 
An' gin 'em both her blessin'. 

Then her red come back like the tide 
Down to the Bay o' Fundy, 
95 An' all I know is they was cried 
In meetin' come nex' Sunday. 



ODE RECITED AT THE HARVARD COM- 
MEMORATION 

JULY 21, 1865 
I 

Weak-winged is song, 
Nor aims at that clear-ethered height 
Whither the brave deed climbs for light: 
We seem to do them wrong, 
5 Bringing our robin 's-leaf to deck their hearse 
Who in warm Ufe-blood wrote their nobler 

verse. 
Our trivial song to honor those who come 
With ears attuned to strenuous trump and 

drum. 
And shaped in squadron-strophes their desire. 



ODE RECITED AT HARVARD COMMEMORATION 117 

10 Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and 
fire: 
Yet sometimes feathered words are strong, 
A gracious memory to buoy up and save 
From Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common 
grave 
Of the unventurous throng. 

II 
15 To-day our Reverend Mother welcomes back 
Her wisest Scholars, those who understood 
The deeper teaching of her mystic tome. 
And offered their fresh lives to make it 
good: 
No lore of Greece or Rome, 
20 No science peddling with the names of things, 
Or reading stars to find inglorious fates. 

Can lift our life with wings 
Far from Death's idle gulf that for the many 
waits, 
And lengthen out our dates 
25 With that clear fame whose memory sings 
In manly hearts to come, and nerves them 
and dilates: 



118 ODE RECITED AT HARVARD COMMEMORATION 

Nor such thy teaching, Mother of us all! 
Not such the trumpet-call 
Of thy diviner mood, 
30 That could thy sons entice 

From happy homes and toils, the fruitful nest 
Of those half-virtues which the world calls 
best, 
Into War's tumult rude; 
But rather far that stern device 
35 The sponsors chose that round thy cradle stood 
In the dim, unventured wood. 
The Veritas that lurks beneath 
The letter's unprolific sheath. 
Life of whate'er makes life worth living, 
40 Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food, 
One heavenly thing whereof earth hath 
the giving. 

Ill 
Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best oil 

Amid the dust of books to find her. 
Content at last, for guerdoa of their toil, 
45 With the cast mantle she hath left behind 

her. 



ODE RECITED AT HARVARD COMMEMORATION 119 

Many in sad faith sought for her, 
Many with crossed hands sighed for her; 
But these, our brothers, fought for her. 
At hfe's dear peril wrought for her, 
50 So loved her that they died for her, 

Tasting the raptured fleetness 
Of her divine completeness: 
Their higher instinct knew 
Those love her best who to themselves are 
true, 
55 And what they dare to dream of, dare to do; 
They followed her and found her 
Where all may hope to find, 
Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind. 
But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round 
her. 
60 Where faith made whole with deed 

Breathes its awakening breath 
Into the lifeless creed. 
They saw her plumed and mailed. 
With sweet, stern face unveiled, 
65 And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them 
in death. 



120 ODE RECITED AT HARVARD COMMEMORATION 

IV 

Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides 
Into the silent hollow of the past; 

What is there that abides 
To make the next age better for the last? 
70 Is earth too poor to give us 

Something to live for here that shall out- 
live us, — 
Some more substantial boon 
Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's 
fickle moon? 
The little that we see 
75 From doubt is never free; 

The little that we do 
Is but half-nobly true; 
With our laborious hiving 
What men call treasure, and the gods call 
dross, 
80 Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving, 

Only secure in every one's conniving, 
A long account of nothings paid with loss. 
Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen 
wires, 



ODE RECITED AT HARVARD COMMEMORATION 121 

After our little hour of strut and rave, 
85 With all our pasteboard passions and desires, 
Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires, 
Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave. 

Ah, there is something here 
Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer, 
90 Something that gives our feeble light 

A high immunity from Night, 
Something that leaps Hfe's narrow bars 
To claim its birthright with the hosts of 
heaven ; 
A seed of sunshine that doth leaven 
95 Our earthly dulness with the beams of stars, 
And glorify our clay 
With light from fountains elder than the 
Day; 
A conscience more divine than we, 
A gladness fed with secret tears, 
100 A vexing, forward-reaching sense 
Of some more noble permanence; 

A hght across the sea, 
Which haunts the soul and will not let it be, 
Still glimmering from the heights of unde- 
generate years. 



122 ODE RECITED AT HARVARD COMMEMORATION 

V 

105 Whither leads the path 

To ampler fates that leads? 
Not down through flowery meads, 
To reap an aftermath 
Of youth's vainglorious weeds, 
no But up the steep, amid the wrath 

And shock of deadly hostile creeds, 
Where the world's best hope and stay 
By battle's flashes gropes a desperate way, 
And every turf the fierce foot clings to bleeds. 
115 Peace hath her not ignoble wreath, 

Ere yet the sharp, decisive word 
Lights the black Ups of cannon, and the sword 

Dreams in its easeful sheath; 
But some day the live coal behind the thought, 
120 Whether from Baal's stone obscene, 

Or from the shrine serene 
Of God's pure altar brought. 
Bursts up in flame ; the war of tongue and pen 
Learns with w^hat deadly purpose it was 
fraught, 
125 And, helpless in the fiery passion caught. 



ODE RECITED AT HARVARD COMMEMORATION 123 

Shakes all the pillared state with shock of men : 
Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed 
Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued, 
And cries reproachful: ^' Was it, then, my 
praise, 
130 And not myself, was loved? Prove now thy 
truth ; 
I claim of thee the promise of thy youth; 
Give me thy hfe, or cower in empty phrase. 
The victim of thy genius, not its mate!" 
Life may be given in many ways, 
135 And loyalty to Truth be sealed 
As bravely in the closet as the field, 
So generous is Fate; 
But then to stand beside her, 
When craven churls deride her, 
140 To front a he in arms and not to yield, — 
This shows, methinks, God's plan 
And measure of a stalwart man, 
Limbed hke the old heroic breeds. 
Who stands self-poised on manhood's soHd 
earth, 
145 Not forced to frame excuses for his birth. 
Fed from within with all the strength he needs. 



124 ODE RECITED AT HARVARD COMMEMORATION 

VI 

Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, 

Whom late the Nation he had led. 
With ashes on her head, 
150 Wept with the passion of an angry grief: 
Forgive me, if from present things I turn 
To speak what in my heart will beat and burn, 
And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn. 
Nature, they say, doth dote, 
155 And cannot make a man 

Save on some worn-out plan, 
Repeating us by rote: 
For him her Old-World mould aside she 
threw. 
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast 
160 Of the unexhausted West, 

With stuff untainted shaped a hero new. 
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and 
true. 
How beautiful to see 
Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed, 
165 Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead; 
One whose meek flock the people joyed to be, 



ODE RECITED AT HARVARD COMMEMORATION 125 

Not lured by any cheat of birth, 
But by his clear-grained human worth, 
And brave old wisdom of sincerity! 
170 They knew that outward grace is dust; 

They could not choose but trust 
In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, 

And supple-tempered will 
That bent like perfect steel to spring again 
and thrust. 
175 Nothing of Europe here, 

Or, then, of Europe fronting morn-ward still. 
Ere any names of Serf and Peer 
Could Nature's equal scheme deface; 
Here was a type of the true elder race, 
180 And one of Plutarch's men talked with us 
face to face. 
I praise him not; it were too late; 
And some innative weakness there must be 
In him who condescends to victory 
Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait, 
185 Safe in himself as in a fate. 

So always firmly he: 
He knew to bide his time, 
And can his fame abide. 



126 ODE RECITED AT HARVARD COMMEMORATION 

Still patient in his simple faith sublime, 
190 Till the wise years decide. 

Great captains, with their guns and drums, 
Disturb our judgment for the hour. 
But at last silence comes; 
These all are gone, and, standing like a 
tower, 
195 Our children shall behold his fame. 

The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man. 
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 
New birth of our new soil, the first Ameri- 
can. 

VII 

Long as man's hope insatiate can discern 
200 Or only guess some more inspiring goal 

Outside of Self, enduring as the pole. 
Along whose course the flying axles burn 
Of spirits bravely-pitched, earth's manUer 
brood; 
Long as below we cannot find 
205 The meed that stills the inexorable mind; 
So long this faith to some ideal Good, 
Under whatever mortal names it masks. 



ODE RECITED AT HARVARD COMMEMORATION 127 

Freedom, Law, Country, this ethereal mood 
That thanks the Fates for their severer tasks, 
210 Feeling its challenged pulses leap, 

While others skulk in subterfuges cheap, 
And, set in Danger's van, has all the boon it 
asks. 
Shall win man's praise and woman's love^ 
Shall be a wisdom that we set above 
215 All other skills and gifts to culture dear, 

A virtue round whose forehead we en- 
wreathe 
Laurels that with a living passion breathe 
When other crowns are cold and soon grow sere. 
What brings us thronging these high rites 
to pay, 
220 And seal these hours the noblest of our year. 
Save that our brothers found this better 
way? 

VIII 

We sit here in the Promised Land 
That flows with Freedom's honey and milk; 
But 't was they won it, sword in hand, 
225 Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk. 



128 ODE RECITED AT HARVARD COMMEMORATION 

We welcome back our bravest and our 

best ; — 
Ah me! not all! some come not with the 
rest, 
Who went forth brave and bright as any here ! 
I strive to mix some gladness with my strain, 
230 But the sad strings complain, 

And will not please the ear; 
I sweep them for a pipan, but they wane 

Again and yet again 
Into a dirge, and die away in pain. 
235 In these brave ranks I only see the gaps. 
Thinking of dear ones whom the dumb turf 

wraps. 
Dark to the triumph which they died to gain : 
Fitlier may others greet the living, 
For me the past is unforgiving; 
240 I with uncovered head 

Salute the sacred dead. 
Who went, and who return not. — Say not so! 
'Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay, 
But the high faith that failed not by the way; 
245 Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave; 
No ban of endless night exiles the brave; 



ODE RECITED AT HARVARD COMMEMORATION 129 

And to the saner mind 

We rather seem the dead that stayed behind. 

Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow! 
250 For never shall their aureoled presence lack: 

I see them muster in a gleaming row, 

With ever-youthful brows that nobler show; 

We find in our dull road their shining track; 
In every nobler mood 
255 We feel the orient of their spirit glow, 

Part of our Hfe's unalterable good. 

Of all our saintlier aspiration; 

They come transfigured back, 

Secure from change in their high-hearted ways, 
260 Beautiful evermore, and with the rays 

Of morn on their white Shields of Expectation! 

IX 

Who now shall sneer? 
Who dare again to say we trace 
Our Unes to a plebeian race? 
265 Roundhead and Cavaher! 

Dreams are those names erewhile in battle 

loud; 
Forceless as is the shadow of a cloud, 



130 ODE RECITED AT HARVARD COMMEMORATION 

They live but in the ear: 
That is best blood that hath most iron in 't, 
270 To edge resolve with, pouring without stint 
For what makes manhood dear. 
Tell us not of Plantagenets, 
Hapsburgs, and Guelfs, whose thin bloods 

crawl 
Down from some victor in a border-brawl! 
275 How poor their outworn coronets, 

Matched with one leaf of that plain civic 

wreath 
Our brave for honor's blazon shall bequeath, 
Through whose desert a rescued Nation sets 
Her heel on treason, and the trumpet hears 
280 Shout victory, tingling Europe's sullen ears 
With vain resentments and more vain re- 
grets ! 

X 

Not in anger, not in pride. 
Pure from passion's mixture rude, 
Ever to base earth allied, 
285 But with far-heard gratitude. 

Still with heart and voice renewed, 



ODE RECITED AT HARVARD COMMEMORATION 131 

To heroes living and dear martyrs dead, 
The strain should close that consecrates our 
brave. 
Lift the heart and Hft the head! 
290 Lofty be its mood and grave, 

Not without a martial ring, 
Not without a prouder tread 
And a peal of exultation: 
Little right has he to sing 
295 Through whose heart in such an hour 

Beats no march of conscious power. 
Sweeps no tumult of elation! 
'Tis no Man we celebrate. 
By his country's victories great, 
300 A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, 
But the pith and marrow of a Nation 
Drawing force from all her men, 
Highest, humblest, weakest, all, — 
Pulsing it- again through them, 
305 Till the basest can no longer cower, 
Feehng his soul spring up divinely tall. 
Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem. 
Come back, then, noble pride, for 'tis her 
dower ! 



132 ODE RECITED AT HARVARD COMMEMORATION 

How could poet ever tower, 
310 If his passions, hopes, and fears, 

If his triumphs and his tears. 
Kept not measure with his people? 
Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and 

waves ! 
Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking 
steeple ! 
315 Banners, advance with triumph, bend your 
staves! 
And from every mountain-peak 
Let beacon-fire to answering beacon speak, 
Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whiteface he, 
And so leap on in light from sea to sea, 
320 Till the glad news be sent 

Across a kindhng continent. 
Making earth feel more firm and air breathe 

braver : 
"Be proud! for she is saved, and all have 
helped to save her! 
She that Ufts up the manhood of the poor, 
325 She of the open soul and open door, 

With room about her hearth for all man- 
kind! 



ODE RECITED AT HARVARD COMMEMORATION 133 

The helm from her bold front she doth un- 
bind, 
Sends all her handmaid armies back to spin, 
330 And bids her navies hold their thunders in. 
No challenge sends she to the elder world, 
That looked askance and hated; a light 

scorn 
Plays on her mouth, as round her mighty 

knees 
She calls her children back, and waits the 
morn 
335 Of nobler day, enthroned between her sub- 
ject seas." 

XI 

Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found 
release ! 
Thy God, in these distempered days. 
Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His 
ways. 
And through thine enemies hath wrought thy 
peace ! 
340 Bow down in prayer and praise! 

Beautiful! my Country! ours once more! 



134 ODE RECITED AT HARVARD COMMEMORATION 

Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair 
O'er such sweet brows as never other wore. 

And letting thy set lips, 
345 Freed from wrath's pale eclipse, 

The rosy edges of their smile lay bare, 
What words divine of lover or of poet 
Could tell our love and make thee know it, 
Among the Nations bright beyond compare? 
350 What WTre our lives without thee? 

What all our lives to save thee? 

We reck not wdiat we gave thee; 

We will not dare to doubt thee, 
But ask whatever else, and we will dare! 



NOTES 



THE VISION OF SIR LAUNFAL 

1. The Musing organist: There is a peculiar felicity in 
this musical introduction. The poem is like an improvisa- 
tion, and was indeed composed much as a musician impro- 
vises, with swift grasp of the subtle suggestions of musical 
tones. It is a dream, an elaborate and somewhat tangled 
metaphor, full of hidden meaning for the accordant mind, 
and the poet appropriately gives it a setting of music, the 
most symbolic of all the arts. It is an allegory, like any one 
of the adventures in the Fairie Queen, and from the very be- 
ginning the reader must be alive to the symbolic meaning, 
upon which Lowell, unlike Spenser, places chief emphasis, 
rather than upon the narrative. Compare the similar mu- 
sical device in Browning's Aht Vogler and Adelaide Proctor's 
Lost Chord. 

6. Theme: The theme, subject, or underlying thought 
of the poem is expressed in line 12 below: 

" We Sinais climb and know it not; " 

or more comprehensively in the group of four lines of which 
this is the conclusion. The organist's fingers wander list- 
lessly over the keys at first; then come forms and figures 
from out of dreamland over the bridge of his careless melody, 
and gradually the vision takes consistent and expressive 
shape. So the poet comes upon his central subject, or theme, 
shaped from his wandering thought and imagination. 

7. Auroral flushes: Like the first faint glimmerings of 
light in the East that point out the pathway of the rising 

135 



136 NOTES 

sun, the uncertain, wavering outlines of the poet's vision 
precede the perfected theme that is drawing near. 

9. Not only around our infancy, etc. : The allusion is to 
Wordsworth's Ode on the Intimations of Immortality, espe- 
cially these lines: 

" Heaven lies about us in our infancy! 
Shades of the prison-house begin to close 

Upon the growing Boy, 
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, 

He sees it in his joy; 
The Youth, who daily farther from the east 

Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, 

And by the vision splendid 

Is on his way attended ; 
At length the Man perceives it die away, 
And fade into the light of common day." 

As Lowell's central theme is so intimately associated with 
that of Wordsworth's poem, if not directly suggested by it, 
the two poems should be read together and compared. Lowell 
maintains that " heaven lies about us " not only in our in- 
fancy, but at all times, if only we have the soul to compre- 
hend it. 

12. We Sinais climb, etc.: Mount Sinai was the moun- 
tain in Arabia on which Moses talked with God (Exodus 
xix, xx). God's miracles are taking place about us all the 
time, if only we can emancipate our souls sufficiently to see 
them. From out of our materialized daily lives we may 
rise at any moment, if we will, to ideal and spiritual things. 
In a letter to his nephew Lowell says: " This same name of 
God is written all over the world in little phenomena that 
occur under our eyes every moment, and I confess that I 
feel very much inclined to hang my head with Pizarro when 
I cannot translate those hieroglyphics into my own vernac- 
ular." (Letters, I, 164). 



NOTES 137 

Compare the following passage in the poem Bibliolatres: 

" If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness 
And find'st not Sinai, 't is thy soul is poor; 
There towers the Mountain of the Voice no less, 
Which whoso seeks shall find, but he who bends, 
Intent on manna still and mortal ends. 
Sees it not, neither hears its thundered lore." 

15. Prophecies: Prophecy is not only prediction, but 
also any inspired discourse or teaching. Compare the follow- 
ing lines from the poem Freedom, written the same year: 

" Are we, then, wholly fallen? Can it be 
That thou. North wind, that from thy mountains bringest 
Their spirit to our plains, and thou, blue sea, 
Who on our rocks thy wreaths of freedom flingest, 
As on an altar, — can it be that ye 
Have wasted inspiration on dead ears. 
Dulled with the too familiar clank of chains? " 

At the end of this poem Lowell gives his view of " fallen 
and traitor lives." He speaks of the " boundless future " 
of our country — 

" Ours if we be strong; 
Or if we shrink, better remount our ships 
And, fleeing God's express design, trace back 
The hero-freighted Mayflower's prophet-track 
To Europe entering her blood-red eclipse." 

While reading Sir Launfal the fact must be kept in mind 
that Lowell was at the time of writing the poem filled with 
the spirit of freedom and reform, and was writing fiery ar- 
ticles in prose for the Anti-Slavery Standard, expressing his 
bitter indignation at the indifference and lukewarmness of 
the Northern people on the subject of slavery. 

17. Druid wood: The Druids were the aged priests of 
the Celts, who performed their religious ceremonies in the 



138 NOTES 

forests, especially among oaks, which were peculiarly sacred 
to them. Hence the venerable woods, like the aged priests, 
offer their benediction. Every power of nature, the winds, 
the mountain, the wood, the sea, has a symbolic meaning 
which we should be able to interpret for our inspiration and 
uplifting. Read Bryant's A Forest Hymn. 

18. Benedicite: An invocation of blessing. Imperative 
form of the Latin benedicere, to bless. Longfellow speaks 
of the power of songs that — 

" Come like the benediction 
That follows after prayer." 

19-20. Compare these lines with the ninth strophe of 
Wordsworth's Ode. The '' inspiring sea " is Wordsworth's 
" immortal sea." Both poets rejoice that some of the im- 
pulses and ideals of youth are kept alive in old age. 

21. Earth gets its price, etc.: Notice the special meaning 
given to Earth here, in contrast with heaven in line 29. Here 
again the thought is suggested by Wordsworth's Ode, sixth 
strophe: 

" Earth fills our lap with pleasures of her own." 

23. Shrives: The priest shrives one when he hears con- 
fession and grants absolution. 

25. Devil's booth: Expand this metaphor and unfold 
its api)lication to every-day life. 

27. Cap and bells: The conventional dress of the court 
fool, or jester, of the Middle Ages, and, after him, of the stage 
clown, consisted of the " fool's cap " and suit of motley, orna- 
mented with little tinkling bells. 

28. Bubbles we buy, etc.: This line, as first published, 
had " earn " for " buy." 

31. This line read originally: " There is no price set," 
etc. The next line began with " And." 

32-95. This rapturous passage descriptive of June is un- 
questionably the most familiar and most celebrated piece 



NOTES 139 

of nature poetry in our literature. It is not only beautiful 
and inspiring in its felicitous phrasings of external nature, 
but it is especially significant as a true expression of the heart 
and soul of the poet himself. It was always " the high-tide 
of the year " with Lowell in June, when his spirits were in 
fine accord with the universal joy of nature. Wherever 
in his poetry he refers to spring and its associations, he al- 
ways expresses the same ecstasy of delight. The passage 
must be compared with the opening lines of Under the Wil- 
lows (which he at first named A June Idyll): 

" June is the pearl of our New England year. 
Still a surprisal, though expected long, 
Her coming startles. Long she lies in wait, 
Makes many a feint, peeps forth, draws coyly back. 
Then, from some southern ambush in the sky, 
With one great gush of blossom storms the world," etc. 

And in Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line the coming of spring 
is delightfully pictured: 

" Our Spring gets everything in tune 
An' gives one leap from April into June," etc. 

In a letter written in June, 1867, Lowell says: " There 
never is such a season, and that shows what a poet God is. 
He says the same thing over to us so often and always new. 
Here I've been reading the same poem for near half a century, 
and never had a notion what the buttercup in the third 
stanza meant before." 

It is worth noting that Lowell's happy June corresponds 
to May in the English poets, as in Wordsworth's Ode: 

" With the heart of May 
Doth every beast keep hohday." 

In New England where " Northern natur " is " slow an' apt 
to doubt," 



140 NOTES 

" May is a pious fraud of the almanac.'' 

or as Hosea Biglow says: 

" Half our May is so awfully like May n't, 
'T would rile a Shaker or an evrige saint." 

41. The original edition has " grasping " instead of 
" groping." 

42. Climbs to a soul, etc. : In his intimate sympathy with 
nature, Lowell emlows her forms with conscious life, as Words- 
worth did, who says in Lines Written in Early Spring: 

" And 't is my faith that every flower 
Enjoys the air it breathes." 

So Lowell in The Cathedral says: 

" And I believe the brown earth takes delight 
In the new snow-drop looking back at her, 
To think that by some vernal alchemy 
It could transmute her darkness into pearl." 

So again he says in Un^er the Willows: 

" I in June am midway to believe 
A tree among my far progenitors, 
Such sympathy is mine with all the race, 
Such mutual recognition vaguely sweet 
There is between us." 

It must be remembered that this humanizing of nature is 
an attitude toward natural objects characteristic only of 
modern poetry, being practically imknown in English 
poetry before the period of Burns and Wordsworth. 

45. The cowslip startles: Surprises the eye with its bright 
patches of green sprinkled with golden blossoms. Cowslip 
is the common name in New England for the marsh-mari- 
gold, which appears early in spring in low wet meadows, and 



NOTES 141 

furnishes not infrequently a savory '' mess of greens " for 
the farmer's dinner- table. 

46. Compare Al Fresco, lines 34-39: 

" The rich, milk-tingeing buttercup 
Its tiny polished urn holds up, 
Filled with ripe summer to the edge, 
The sun in his own wine to pledge." 

56. Nice: Delicately discriminating. 
62. This line originally read " because God so wills it." 
71. Maize has sprouted: There is an anxious period for 
the farmer after his corn is planted, for if the spring is " back- 
ward" and the weather cold, his seed may decay in the ground 
before sprouting. 

73. So in Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line, when robin- 
redbreast sees the " hossches'nuts' leetle hands unfold " he 
knows — 

" Thet arter this ther' 's only blossom-snows; 
So, choosin' out a handy crotch an' spouse. 
He goes to plast'rin' his adobe house." 

77. Note the happy effect of the internal rhyme in this 
line. 

93. Healed with snow: Explain the appropriateness of 
the metaphor. 

94-95. Is the transition here from the prelude to the 
story abrupt, or do the preceding lines lead up to it appro- 
priately? Just why does .Sir Launfal now remember his 
vow? Do these lines introduce the " theme " that the 
musing organist has finally found in dreamland, or the sym- 
bolic illustration of his theme? 

97. Richest mail : The knight's coat of mail was usually 
of polished steel, often richly decorated with inlaid patterns 
of gold and jewels. To serve his high purpose, Sir Launfal 
brings forth his most precious treasures. 



142 NOTES 

99. Holy Grail: According to medieval legend, the 8an- 
greal was the cup or chalice, made of emerald, which was 
used by Christ at the last supper, and in which Joseph of 
Arimathea caught the last drops of Christ's blood when he 
was taken down from the cross. The quest of the Grail is 
the central theme of the Arthurian Romances. Tennyson's 
Holy Grail should be read, and the student should also be 
made familiar with the beautiful versions of the legend in 
Abbey's series of mural paintings in the Boston Public 
Library, and in Wagner's Parsifal. 

103. On the rushes: In ancient halls and castles the floors 
were commonly strewn with rushes. In Taming of the Shrew, 
when preparing for the home-coming of Petruchio and his 
bride, Grumio says: " Is supper ready, the house trimmed, 
rushes strewed, cobwebs swept? " 

109. The crows flapped, etc.: Suggestive of the quiet, 
heavy flight of the crow in a warm day. The beginning and 
the end of the stanza suggest drowsy quiet. The vision 
begins in this stanza. The nature pictures are continued, 
but with new symbolical meaning. 

114. Like an outpost of winter: The cold, gloomy castle 
stands in .strong contrast to the surrounding landscape filled 
with the joyous sunshine of summer. So the proud knight's 
heart is still inaccessible to true charity and warm human 
sympathy. So aristocracy in its power and pride stands 
aloof from democracy with its humility and aspiration for 
human brotherhood. This stanza is especially figurative. 
The poet is unfolding the main theme, the underlying moral 
purpose, of the whole poem, but it is still kept in vague, 
dreamy symbolism. 

116. North Countree: The north of England, the home 
of the border ballads. This form of the word " countree," 
with accent on the last syllable, is common in the old ballads. 
Here it gives a flavor of antiquity in keeping with the story. 

122. Pavilions tall: The trees, as in line 125, the broad 
green tents. Note how the military figure, beginning with 



NOTES 143 

" outposts," in line 115, is continued and developed through- 
out the stanza, and reverted to in the word " siege " in the 
next stanza. 

130. Maiden knight: A young, untried, unpracticed 
knight. The expression occurs in Tennyson's Sir Galahad. 
So " maiden mail " below. 

137. As a locust-leaf : The small delicate leaflets of the com- 
pound locust-leaf seem always in a '' lightsome " movement. 

138. The original edition has " unscarred mail." 
138-139. Compare the last lines of Tennyson's Sir Gal- 
ahad: 

" By bridge and ford, by park and pale, 

All-armed I ride, whate'er betide, 
Until I find the Holy Grail." 

147. Made mom: Let in the morning, or came into the 
full morning light as the huge gate opened. 

148. Leper: Why did the poet make the crouching beg- 
gar a leper? 

152. For " gan shrink " the original has " did shrink." 
155. Bent of stature: Criticise this phrase. 
158. So he tossed ... in scorn: This is the turning- 
point of the moral movement of the story. Sir Launfal at 
the very beginning makes his fatal mistake; his noble spirit 
and lofty purposes break doWn with the first test. He re- 
fuses to see a brother in the loathsome leper; the light and 
warmth of human brotherhood had not yet entered his soul, 
just as the summer sunshine had not entered the frowning 
castle. The regeneration of his soul must be worked out 
through wandering and suffering. Compare the similar 
plot of the Ancient Mariner. ♦ 

163. No true alms: The alms must also be in the heart. 

164. Originally '' He gives nothing but worthless gold." 
166. Slender mite: An allusion to the widow's "two 

mites." (Luke xxi, 1-4.) 

168. The all-sustaining Beauty: The all-pervading spirit 
of God that unites all things in one sympathetic whole. This 



144 NOTES 

divinity in humanity is its highest beauty. In The Oak 
Lowell says: 

" Lord! all thy works are lessons; each contains 
Some emblem of man's all-containing soul." 

172. A god goes with it: The god-like quality of real 
charity, of heart to heart sympathy. In a letter written a 
little after the composition of this poem Lowell speaks of 
love and freedom as being " the sides which Beauty pre- 
sented to him then." 

172. Store: Plenty, abundance. 

175. Summers: What is gained by the use of this word 
instead of winters? 

176. Wold: A high, open and barren field that catches 
the full sweep of the wind. The " wolds " of north England 
are like the " downs " of the south. 

181. The little brook: In a letter written in December, 
1848, Lowell says: " Last night I walked to Watertown over 
the snow with the now moon before me and a sky exactly 
like that in Page's evening landscape. Orion was rising 
behind me, and, as I stood on the hill just before you enter 
the village, the stillness of the fields around me was delicious, 
broken only by the tinkle of a little brook which runs too 
swiftly for Frost to catch it. My picture of the brook in 
Sir Launfal was drawn from it." See the poem Beaver 
Brook (originally called The Mill), and the winter picture in 
An Indian-Summer Reverie, lines 148-196. 

184. Groined: Groined arches are formed by the inter- 
section of two arches crossing at any angle, forming a ribbed 
vault; a characteristic feature of Gothic architecture. 

190. Forest-crypt: The crypt of a church is the basement, 
filled with arched pillars that sustain the building. The 
cavern of the brook, as the poet will have us imagine it, is 
like this subterranean crypt, where the pillars are like trees 
and the groined arches like interlacing branches, decorated 
with frost leaves. The poet seems to have had in mind 



NOTES 145 

throughout the description the interior of the Gothic cathe- 
drals, as shown by the many suggestive terms used, 
" groined," " crypt," " aisles," " fretwork," and " carvings." 
193. Fretwork: The ornamental work carved in intri- 
cate patterns, in oak or stone, on the ceilings of old halls 
and churches. 

195. Sharp relief: When a figure stands out prominently 
from the marble or other material from which it is cut, it 
is said to be in '' high relief," in distinction from " low re- 
lief," bas relief. 

196. Arabesques: Complicated patterns of interwoven 
foliage, flowers and fruits, derived from Arabian art. Lowell 
had undoubtedly studied many times the frost designs on 
the window panes. 

201. That crystalled the beams, etc.: That caught the 
beams of moon and sun as in a crystal. For " that " the 
original edition has " which." 

204. Winter-palace of ice: An allusion, apparently, to 
the ice-palace built by the Empress of Russia, Catherine II, 
" most magnificent and mighty freak. The wonder of the 
North," Cowper called it. Compare Lowell's description of 
the frost work with Cowper 's similar description in The 
Task, in the beginning of Book V. 

205-210. 'Twas as if every image, etc.: Note the exqui- 
site fancy in these lines. The elves have preserved in the 
ice the pictures of summer foliage and clouds that were 
mirrored in the water as models for another summer. 

211. The hall: In the old castles the hall was always the 
large banqueting room, originally the common living room. 
Here all large festivities would take place. 

213. Corbel: A bracket-like support projecting from a 
wall from which an arch springs or on which a beam rests. 
The poet has in mind an ancient hall in which the ceiling 
is the exposed woodwork of the roof. 

214. This line at first read: "With the lightsome," etc 
Why did Lowell's refining taste strike out " the "? 



146 NOTES 

216. Yule-log: The great log, sometimes the root of a tree, 
burned in the huge fireplace on Christmas eve, with special 
ceremonies and merrymakings. It was lighted with a brand 
preserved from the last year's log, and connected with its 
burning were many quaint superstitions and customs. The 
celebration is a survival through our Scandinavian ancestors 
of the winter festival in honor of the god Thor. Herrick 
describes it trippingly in one of his songs: 

" Come, bring with a noise, 

My merrie, merrie boys. 
The Christmas log to the firing ; 

While my good dame, she 

Bids ye all be free. 
And drink to your heart's desiring." 

219. Like a locust, etc.: Only one who has heard both 
pounds frequently can appreciate the close truth of this 
simile. The metaphors and similes in this stanza are de- 
serving of special study. 

226. Harp: Prof. William Vaughn Moody questions 
whether " the use of Sir Launfal's hair as a ' harp ' for the 
wind to play a Christmas carol on " is not " a bit grotesque." 
Does the picture of Sir Launfal in these two stanzas belong 
in the Prelude or in the story in Part Second? 

230. Carol of its own: Contrasted with the carols that 
are being sung inside the castle. 

231. Burden: The burden or refrain is the part repeated 
at the end of each stanza of a ballad or song, expressing the 
main theme or sentiment. Still is in the sense of always, 
ever. 

233. Seneschal: An officer of the castle who had charge 
of feasts and ceremonies, like the modern Lord Chamberlain 
of the King's palace. Note the effect of the striking figure 
in this line. 

237. Window-slits: Narrow perpendicular openings in 



NOTES 147 

the wall, serving both as windows and as loopholes from 
which to fire at an enemy. 

238. Build out its piers: The beams of light are like the 
piers or jetties that extend out from shore into the water 
to protect ships. Such piers are also built out to protect 
the shore from the violent wash of the ocean. The poet may 
possibly, however, have had in mind the piers of a bridge 
that support the arches and stand against the sweep of the 
stream. 

243. In this line instead of '' the weaver Winter " the 
original has " the frost's swift shuttles." Was the Change 
an improvement? 

244. A single crow: Note the effect of introducing this 
lone crow into the bleak landscape. 

250. It must not be forgotten that this old Sir Launfal 
is only in the dream of the real Sir Launfal, who is still lying 
on the rushes within his own castle. As the poor had often 
been turned away with cold, heartless selfishness, so he is 
now turned away from his own " hard gate." 
_ 251. Sate: The use of this archaic form adds to the 
antique flavor of the poem. So with the use of the word 
" tree " for cross, in line 281 below. Lowell was passionately 
fond of the old poets and the quaint language of the early 
centuries of English literature, and loved to introduce into 
his own poetry words and phrases from these sources. Of 
this habit he says: 

" If some small savor creep into my rhyme 
Of the old poets, if some words I use. 
Neglected long, which" have the lusty thews 
Of that gold-haired and earnest-hearted time, 
Whose loving joy and sorrow all sublime 
Have given our tongue its starry eminence, — 
It is not pride, God knows, but reverence 
Which hath grown in me since my childhood's prime." 

254. Recked: Cared for. 



148 NOTES 

255. Surcoat: A long flowing garment worn over the 
armor, on which was " emblazoned " the coat of arms. If 
the knight were a crusader, a red cross was embroidered 
thus on the surcoat. 

256. The sign: The sign of the cross, the symbol of humil- 
ity and love. This is the first real intimation, the keynote, of 
the transformation that has taken place in Sir Launfal's 
soul. 

259. Idle mail: Useless, ineffectual protection. This 
figure carries us back to the " gilded mail," line 131, in which 
Sir Launfal *' flashed forth " at the beginning of his quest. 
The poem is full of these minor antitheses, which should be 
traced by the student. 

264-272. He sees, etc.: This description is not only 
beautiful in itself, but it serves an important purpose in the 
plan of the poem. It is a kind of condensation or symbolic 
expression of Sir Launfal's many years of wandering in orien- 
tal lands. The hint or brief outline is given, which must 
be expanded by the imagination of the reader. Otherwise 
the story would be inconsistent and incomplete. Notice 
how deftly the picture is introduced. 

272. Signal of palms: A group of palm trees seen afar 
off over the desert is a welcome signal of an oasis with water 
for the relief of the suffering traveler. Some critics have 
objected that so small a spring could not have " waved " 
so large a signal ! 

273. Notice the abruptness with which the leper is here 
introduced, just as before at the beginning of the story. The 
vision of " a sunnier clime " is quickly swept away. The 
shock of surprise now has a very different effect upon Sir 
Launfal. 

275. This line at first read: " But Sir Launfal sees naught 
save the grewsome thing." 

278. White: " And, behold, Miriam became leprous, 
white as snow." (Numbers xii, 10.) 

279. Desolate horror: The adjective suggests the out- 



NOTES 149 

cast, isolated condition of lepers. They were permitted no 
contact with other people. The ten lepers who met Jesus 
in Samaria " stood afar off and lifted up their voices." 

281. On the tree: On the cross. " Whom they slew 
and hanged on a tree, Him God raised up the third day." 
(Acts X, 39.) This use of the word is common in early lit- 
erature, especially in the ballads. 

285. See John xx, 25-27. 

287. Through him: The leper. Note that the address 
is changed in these two lines. Compare Matthew xxv, 34-40. 
This gift to the leper differs how from the gift in Part First? 

291. Leprosie: The antiquated spelling is used for the 
perfect rhyme and to secure the antique flavor. 

292. Girt: The original word here was " caged." 

294. Ashes and dust: Explain the metaphor. Compare 
with "sackcloth and ashes." See Esther iv, 3; Jonah iii, 
6; Job ii, 8. 

300, 301. The figurative character of the lines is empha- 
sized by the word " soul " at the end. The miracle of Cana 
seems to have been in the poet's mind. 

304, 305. The leper is transfigured and Christ himself 
appears in the vision of the sleeping Sir Launfal. 

307. The Beautiful Gate: " The gate of the temple which 
is called Beautiful," where Peter healed the lame man. 
{Ads iii, 2.) 

308. Himself the Gate : See John x, 7, 9 : ''I am the door." 
310. Temple of God : " Know ye not that ye are the temple 

of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you? " 
(/ Corinthians iii, 16, 17; vi, 19.) 

312. This line at first began with " which." 

313. Shaggy: Is this term applicable to Sir Launfal's 
present condition, or is the whole simile carried a little be- 
yond the point of true likeness ? 

314. Softer: Lowell originally wrote " calmer " here. 
The change increased the effect of the alliteration. Was it 
otherwise an improvement? 



150 NOTES 

315. Lo, it is I: John vi, 20. 

316. Without avail: Was Sir LaunfaFs long quest en- 
tirely without avail ? Compare the last lines of Tennyson's 
Holy Grail, where Arthur complains that his knights who 
went upon the Holy Quest have followed " wandering fires, 
lost in the quagmire," and " leaving human wrongs to right 
themselves." 

320, 321. Matthew xxvi, 26-28; Mark xiv, 22-24. 

322. Holy Supper: The Last Supper of Christ and his 
disciples, upon which is instituted the communion service of 
the churches. The spirit of the Holy Supper, the communion 
of true brotherhood, is realized when the Christlike spirit 
triumphs in the man. " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto 
one of the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto 
me." {Matthew xxv, 40.) 

326. The original has " bestows " for " gives." 

328. Swound: The antiquated form of swoon. 

332, 333. Interpret the lines. Did the poet have in 
mind the spiritual armor described in Ephesians vi, 11-17? 

336. Hangbird: The oriole, so called from its hanging 

nest; one of Lowell's most beloved " garden acquaintances " 

at Elmwood. In a letter he says: " They build a pendulous 

nest, and so flash in the sun that our literal rustics call them 

fire hang-birds." See the description in Under the Willows 

beginning: ,,,,., , , ^ „ 

My oriole, my glance of summer fire. 

See also the charming prose description in My Garden Ac- 
quaintance. 

338. Summer's long siege at last is o'er: The return to 
this figure rounds out the story and serves to give unity to 
the plan of the poem. The siege is successful, summer has 
conquered and entered the castle, warming and lighting its 
cold, cheerless interior. 

342, 343. Is Lowell expressing here his own convictions 
about ideal democracy? 



NOTES 151 



THE SHEPHERD OF KING ADMETUS 

Apollo, the god of music, having given offense to Zeus, 
was condemned to serve for the space of one year as a shep- 
herd under Admetus, King of Thessaly. This is one of the 
most charming of the myths of Apollo, and has been often 
used by the poets. Remarking upon this poem, and others 
of its period, Scudder says that it shows " how persistently 
in Lowell's mind was present this aspect of the poet which 
makes him a seer," a recognition of an " all-embracing, 
all-penetrating power which through the poet transmutes 
nature into something finer and more eternal, and gives him 
a vantage ground from which to perceive more truly the 
realities of life." Compare with this poem An Incident in a 
Railroad Car. 

5. Lyre: According to mythology, Apollo's lyre was a 
tortoise-shell strung with seven strings. 

8. Fagots for a witch: The introduction of this witch 
element into a Greek legend rather mars the consistency of 
_the poem. Lowell finally substituted for the stanza the 
following: 

" LTpon an empty tortoise-shell 

He stretched some chords, and drew 
Music that made men's bosoms swell 

Fearless, or brimmed their eyes with dew." 

HEBE 

Lowell suggests in this dainty symbolical lyric his concep- 
tion of the poet's inspiration. Hebe was cup-bearer to the 
gods of Olympus, in Greek mythology, and poured for them 
their nectar. She was also the goddess of eternal youth. By 
an extension of the symbolism she becomes goddess of the 
eternal joyousness of the poetic gift. The " influence fleet " 
is the divine afflatus that fills the creative mind of the poet. 



152 NOTES 

But Pegasus cannot be made to work in harness at will. 
True inspiration comes only in choice moments. Coy Hebe 
cannot be wooed violently. Elsewhere he says of the muse: 

" Harass her not; thy heat and stir 
But greater coyness breed in her." 

" Follow thy life," he says, " be true to thy best self, then 
Hebe will bring her choicest ambrosia." That is — 

" Make thyself rich, and then the Muse 
Shall court thy precious interviews. 
Shall take thy head upon her knee, 
And such enchantment lilt to thee. 
That thou shalt hear the life-blood flow 
From farthest stars to grass-blades low." 

TO THE DANDELION 

Four stanzas were added to this poem after its first ap- 
pearance, the sixth, seventh, eighth and tenth, but in the 
finally revised edition these were cut out, very likely because 
Lowell regarded them as too didactic. Indeed the poem 
is complete and more artistic without them. 

" Of Lowell's earlier pieces," says Stedman, " the one 
which shows the finest sense of the poetry of nature is that ad- 
dressed To the Dandelion. The opening phrase ranks with 
the selectest of Wordsworth and Keats, to whom imagina- 
tive diction came intuitively, and both thought and lan- 
guage are felicitous throughout. This poem contains many 
of its author's peculiar beauties and none of his faults; it 
was the outcome of the mood that can summon a rare spirit 
of art to express the gladdest thought and most elusive 
feeling." 

6. Eldorado: The land of gold, supposed to be somewhere 
in South America, which the European adventurers, espe- 
cially the Spaniards, were constantly seeking in the sixteenth 
century. 



NOTES 153 

27. Sybaris: An ancient Greek colony in southern Italy 
whose inhabitants were devoted to luxury and pleasure. 
52-54. Compare Sir Launfal. 

MY LOVE 

Lowell's love for Maria White is beautifully enshrined in 
this little poem. He wrote it at about the time of their 
engagement. While it is thus personal in its origin, it is 
universal in its expression of ideal womanhood, and so has 
a permanent interest and appeal. In its strong simplicity 
and crystal purity of style, it is a little masterpiece. Though 
filled with the passion of his new and beautiful love, its 
movement is as calm and artistically restrained as that of 
one of Wordsworth's best lyrics. 

THE CHANGELING 

This is one of the tender little poems that refer to the 
death of the poet's daughter Blanche, which occurred in 
March, 1847. The First Snow-fall and She Came and Went 
embody the same personal grief. When sending the former 
to his friend Sydney H. Gay for publication, he wrote: " May 
you never have the key which shall unlock the whole mean- 
ing of the poem to you." Underwood, in his Biographical 
Sketch says that " friends of the poet, who were admitted to 
the study in the upper chamber, remember the pairs of baby 
shoes that hung over a picture-frame." The volume in 
which this poem first appeared contained this dedication — 
" To the ever fresh and happy memory of our little Blanche 
this volume is reverently dedicated." 

A changeling, according to folk-lore and fairy tale, is a 
fairy child that the fairies substitute for a human child that 
they have stolen. The changeling was generally sickly, 
shrivelled and in every way repulsive. Here the poet re- 
verses the superstition, substituting the angels for the mis- 



154 NOTES 

chievous fairies, who bring an angel child in place of the lost 
one. Whittier has a poem on the same theme, The Change- 
ling. 

29. Zingari: The Gypsies — suggested by "wandering 
angels " above — who wander about the earth, and also 
sometimes steal children, according to popular belief. 

52. Bliss it: A rather violent use of the word, not recog- 
nized by the dictionaries, but nevertheless felicitous. 

AN INDIAN-SUMMER REVERIE 

Lowell's love of Elm wood and its surroundings finds 
expression everywhere in his writings, both prose and 
verse, but nowhere in a more direct, personal manner than 
in this poem. He was not yet thirty when the poem was 
written, and Cambridge could still be called a ''village," but 
the familiar scenes already had their retrospective charms, 
which increased with the passing years. Later in life he 
again celebrated his affection for this home environment in 
Under the Willows. 

" There are poetic lines and phrases in the poem," says 
Scudder, " and more than all the veil of the season hangs 
tremulously over the whole, so that one is gently stirred by 
the poetic feeling of the rambling verses; yet, after all, the 
most enduring impression is of the young man himself in 
that still hour of his life, when he was conscious, not so much 
of a reform to which he must put his hand, as of the love of 
beauty, and of the vague melancholy which mingles with 
beauty in the soul of a susceptible poet. The river winding 
through the marshes, the distant sound of the ploughman, 
the near chatter of the chipmunk, the individual trees, each 
living its own life, the march of the seasons flinging lights 
and shadows over the broad scene, the pictures of human 
life associated with his own experience, the hurried survey 
of his village years — all these pictures float before his vision ; 
and then, with an abruptness which is like the choking of 



NOTES 155 

the singer's voice with tears, there wells up the thought of 
the little life which held as in one precious drop the love 
and faith of his heart." 

I. Visionary tints: The term Indian summer is given to 
almost any autumnal period of exceptionally quiet, dry and 
hazy weather. In America these characteristic features of 
late fall were especially associated with the middle West, at 
a time when the Indians occupied that region. 

5. Hebe: Hebe was cup-bearer to the gods at their 
feasts on Olympus. Like Hebe, Autumn fills the sloping 
fields, rimmed round with distant hills, with her own deli- 
cious atmosphere of dreamy and poetic influence. 

II. My own projected spirit: It seems to the poet that 
his own spirit goes out to the world, steeping it in reverie 
like his owti, rather than receiving the influence from na- 
ture's mood. 

25. Gleaning Ruth: For the story of Ruth's gleaning 
in the fields of Boaz, see the book of Ruth, ii. 

38. Chipmunk: Lowell at first had '' squirrel " here, 
which would be inconsistent with the " underground fast- 
ne^." And yet, are chipmunks seen up in walnut trees ? 

40. This line originally read, '' with a chipping bound." 
Cheeping is chirping, or giving the peculiar cluck that sounds 
like " cheep," or '' chip." 

45. Faint as smoke, etc.: The farmer burns the stubble 
and other refuse of the season before his " fall plowing." 

46. The single crow, etc.: Note the full significance of 
this detail of the picture. Compare Bryant's Death of the 
Flowers : 

" And from the wood-top calls the crow through all the 
gloomy day." 

50. Compare with this stanza the pretty little poem, 
The Birch Tree. 
68. Lavish of their long-hid gold: The chestnut leaves, 



156 NOTES 

it will be remembered, turn to a bright golden yellow in 
autumn. These descriptions of autunm foliage are all as 
true as beautiful. 

73. Maple-swamps: We generally speak of the swamp- 
maple, which grows in low ground, and has particularly bril- 
liant foliage in autumn. 

82. Tangled blackberry: This is the creeping blackberry 
of course, which every one remembers whose feet have 
been caught in its prickly tangles. 

91. Martyr oak: The oak is surroimded with the blazing 
foliage of the ivy, like a burning martyr. 

99. Dear marshes: The Charles River near Elmwood 
winds through broad salt marshes, the characteristic fea- 
tures of which Lowell describes with minute and loving 
fidelity. 

127. Bobolink: If Lowell had a favorite bird, it was the 
bobolink, although the oriole was a close competitor for his 
praises. In one of his letters he says: " I think the bobolink 
the best singer in the world, even undervaluing the lark and 
the nightingale in the comparison." And in another he 
writes: " That liquid tinkle of theirs is the true fountain 
of youth if one can only drink it with the right ears, and I 
always date the New Year from the day of my first draught. 
Messer Roberto di Lincoln, with his summer alb over his 
shoulders, is the true chorister for the bridals of earth and 
sky. There is no bird that seems to me so thoroughly happy 
as he, so void of all arrilre pevsce about getting a liveli- 
hood. The robin sings matins and vespers somewhat con- 
scientiously, it seems to me — makes a business of it and 
pipes as it were by the yard — but Bob squanders song like 
a poet." 

Compare the description in Sunthin' in the Pastoral Line: 

" 'Nuff said, June's bridesman, poet o' the year, 
Gladness on wings, the bobolink, is here; 
Half hid in tip-top apple-blooms he swings, 



NOTES 157 

Or climbs aginst the breeze with quiverin' wings, 

Or, givin' way to 't in a mock despair, 

Runs down, a brook o' laughter, thru the air." 

See also the opening lines of Under the Willows for another 
description full of the ecstasy of both bird and poet. The 
two passages woven together appear in the essay Cambridge 
Thirty Years Ago, as a quotation. An early poem on The 
Bobolink, delightful and widely popular, was omitted from 
later editions of his poems by Lowell, perhaps because to his 
maturer taste the theme was too much moralized in his early 
manner. " Shelley and Wordsworth," says Mr. Brownell, 
" have not more worthily immortalized the skylark than 
Lowell has the bobolink, its New England congener." 

134. Another change: The description now returns to 
the marshes. 

147. Simond's hill: In the essay Cambridge Thirty Years 
Ago Lowell describes the village as seen from the top of this 
hill. 

159-161. An allusion to the Mexican War, against which 
Lowell was directing the satire of the Biglow Papers. 

174-182. Compare the winter pictures in Whittier's 
Snowbound. 

111. Formal candles: Candles lighted for some form or 
ceremony, as in a religious service. 

192. Stonehenge: Stonehenge on Salisbury plain in 
the south of England is famous for its huge blocks of stone 
now lying in confusion, supposed to be the remains of an 
ancient Druid temple. 

207. Sanding: The continuance of the metaphor in 
" higher waves " are '' whelming." With high waves the 
sand is brought in upon the land, encroaching upon its 
limits. 

209. Muses' factories: The buildings of Harvard College. 

218. House-bespotted swell: Lowell notes with some 
resentment the change from nature's simple beauties to 



158 NOTES 

the pretentiousness of wealth shown in incongruous build- 
ings. 

220. Cits: Contracted from citizens. During the French 
Revolution, when all titles were abolished, the term citizen 
was applied to every one, to denote democratic simplicity 
and equality. 

223. Gentle Allston: Washington Allston, the celebrated 
painter, whom Lowell describes as he remembered him in 
the charming essay Cambridge Thirty Years Ago. 

225. Virgilium vidi tantum: I barely saw Virgil — caught 
a ghmpse of him — a phrase applied to any passing glimpse 
of greatness. 

227. Undine-like: Undine, a graceful water nymph, is 
the heroine of the charming little romantic story by De la 
Motte Fouque. 

234. The village blacksmith: See Longfellow's famous 
poem. The Village Blacksmith. The chestnut was cut down 
in 1876. An arm-chair made from its wood still stands in 
the Longfellow house, a gift to Longfellow from the Cam- 
bridge school children. 

254. Six old willows: These much-loved trees afforded 
Lowell a subject for a later poem Under the Willows, in which 
he describes particularly one ancient willow that had been 
spared, he " knows not by what grace." by the ruthless 
*' New World subduers " — 

" One of six, a willow Pleiades, 
The seventh fallen, that lean along the brink 
Where the steep upland dips into the marsh." 

In a letter written twenty years after the Reverie to J. T. 
Fields, Lowell says: " My heart was almost broken yester- 
day by seeing nailed to my willow a board with these words 
on it, ' These trees for sale.' The wretch is going to peddle 
them for firewood! If I had the money, I would buy the 
piece of ground they stand on to save them — the dear friends 
of a lifetime." 



NOTES 159 

255. Paul Potter: One of the most famous of the Dutch 
painters of the seventeenth century, notable for the strong 
reahsm of his work. 

264. CoUegisse juvat: The full sentence, in the first ode 
of Horace, reads, "^Curriculo pulverem Olympicum collegisse 
juvat." (It is a pleasure to have collected the dust of Olym- 
pus on one's chariot wheels.) The allusion is to the Olympic 
games, the most celebrated festival of Greece. Lowell 
puns upon the word collegisse with his own coinage, which 
may have the double meaning of going to college and col- 
lecting. 

272. Blinding anguish: An allusion to the death of his 
little daughter Blanche. See The Changeling, The First 
Snow-fall, and She Came and Went. 

THE OAK 

11. Uncinctured front: The forehead no longer encircled 
with a crown. 

13-16. There is a little confusion in the figures here, the 
cathedral part of the picture being a little far fetched. 

40. Mad Pucks: Puck is the frolicsome, mischief-making 
spirit of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. 

45. Dodona grove: The grove of oaks at Dodona was the 
seat of a famous Greek oracle, whose responses were whis- 
pered through the murmuring foliage of the trees. 

BEAVER BROOK 

Beaver Brook at Waverley"was a favorite resort of Lowell's 
and it is often mentioned in his writings. In summer and 
winter it was the frequent goal of his walks. The poem was 
at first called The Mill. It was first published in the Anti- 
Slavery Standard, and to the editor, Sidney H. Gay, Lowell 
wrote: — "Don't you like the poem I sent you last week? 
I was inclined to think pretty well of it, but I have not seen 



160 NOTES 

it in print yet. The little mill stands in a valley between 
one of the spurs of Wellington Hill and the main summit, 
just on the edge of Waltham. It is surely one of the love- 
liest spots in the world. It is one of my lions, and if you 
will make me a visit this spring, I will taj>;e you up to hear it 
roar, and I will show you ' the oaks ' — the largest, I fancy, 
left in the country." 

21. Undine: In mythology and romance, Undine is a 
water-spirit who is endowed with a soul by her marriage with 
a mortal. The race is the watercourse conducted from the 
dam in an open trough or " penstock " to the wheel. 

45. In that new childhood of the Earth: This poem was 
written a few weeks after the Vision of Sir Launfal was pub- 
lished, and it therefore naturally partakes of its idealism. 

THE PRESENT CRISIS 

This poem was written in 1844. The discussion over the 
annexation of Texas was absorbing public attention. The 
anti-slavery party opposed annexation, believing that it 
would strengthen the slave-holding interests, and for the 
same reason the South was urging the scheme. Lowell 
wrote several very strong anti-slavery poems at this time, 
To W. L. Garrison, Wendell Phillips, On the Death of C. T. 
Torrey, and others, which attracted attention to him as a 
new and powerful ally of the reform party. " These poems," 
says George William Curtis, *' especially that on The Pres- 
ent Crisis, have a Tyrtaean resonance, a stately rhetorical 
rhythm, that make their dignity of thought, their intense 
feeling, and picturesque imagery, superbly effective in recita- 
tion. They sang themselves on every anti-slavery platform." 

While the poem was inspired by the political struggle of 
the time, which Lowell regarded as a crisis in the history of 
our national honor and progress, its chief strength is due to 
the fact that its lofty sentiment is universal in its appeal, 
and not applicable merely to temporal and local conditions. 



NOTES 161 

17. Round the earth's electric circle, etc.: This prophetic 
figure was doubtless suggested by the first telegraph line, 
which Samuel F. B. Morse had just erected between Baltimore 
and Washington. 

37. The Word: "In the beginning was the Word, 
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." 
(John i, 1.) 

44. Delphic cave: The oracle at Delphi was the most 
famous and authoritative among the Greeks. The priestess 
who voiced the answers of the god was seated in a natural 
fissure in the rocks. 

46. Cyclops: The Cyclopes were brutish giants with one 
eye who lived in caverns and fed on human flesh, if the oppor- 
tunity offered. Lowell is recalling in these lines the adven- 
ture of Ulysses with the Cyclops, in the ninth book of 
Homer's Odyssey. 

64, Credo: Latin, I believe: the first word in the Latin 
version of the Apostles' Creed, hence used for creed. 

THE COURTIN' 

This poem first appeared as "a short fragment of a 
pastoral," in the introduction to the First Series of the 
Biglow Papers. It is said to have been composed merely to 
fill a blank page, but its popularity was so great that 
Lowell expanded it to twice its original length, and finally 
printed it as a kind of introduction to the Second Series of 
the Biglow Papers. It first appeared, however, in its 
expanded form in a charitable publication. Autograph Leaves 
of Our Country's Aidhors, repi'oduced in facsimile from the 
original manuscript. 

" This bucolic idyl," says Stedman, " is without a counter- 
part; no richer juice can be pressed from the wild grape of 
the Yankee soil." Greenslet thinks that this poem is 
" perhaps the most nearly perfect of his poems." 

17. Crooknecks: Crookneck squashes. 



162 NOTES 

19. Ole queen*s-arm : The old musket brought from the 
Concord fight in 1775. 

32, To draw a straight furrow when plowing is regarded 
as evidence of a skilful farmer. 

36. All is: The truth is, " all there is about it." 

37. Long o' her: Along of her, on account of her. 

40. South slope: The slope of a hill facing south catches 
the spring sunshine. 

43. Ole Hunderd: Old Hundred is one of the most 
familiar of the old hymn tunes. 

58. Somewhat doubtful as to the sequel. 

94. Bay o' Fundy: The Bay of Fundy is remarkable 
for its high and violent tides, owing to the peculiar confor- 
mation of its banks. 

96. Was cried: The "bans" were cried, the announce- 
ment of the engagement in the church, according to the 
custom of that day. 

THE COMMEMORATION ODE 

The poem was dedicated " To the ever sweet and shining 
memory of the ninety-three sons of Harvard College who 
have died for their country in the war of nationality." The 
text of the poem is here given as Lowell first published it 
in 1865. He afterward made a few verbal changes, and 
added one new strophe after the eighth. There is a special 
interest in studying the ode in the form in which it came 
rushing from the poet's brain. 

1-14. The deeds of the poet are weak and trivial com- 
pared with the deeds of heroes. They live their high ideals 
and die for them. Yet the gentle words of the poet may 
sometimes save unusual lives from that oblivion to which 
all common lives are destined. 

5. Robin's-leaf: An allusion to the ballad of the Babes 
in the Wood. 

9. Squadron-strophes: The term strophe originally was 



NOTES 163 

applied to a metrical form that was repeated in a certain 
established way, like the strophe and antistrophe of the Greek 
ode, as sung by a divided chorus; it is now applied to any 
stanza form. The poem of heroism is a " battle-ode," whose 
successive stanzas are marching squadrons, whose verses are 
lines of blazing guns, and whose melody is the strenuous 
music of " trump and drum." 

13. Lethe's dreamless ooze: Lethe is the river of obhvion 
in Hades; its slimy depths of forgetfulness are not even 
disturbed by dreams. 

14. Unventurous throng: The vast majority of common- 
place beings who neither achieve nor attempt deeds of " high 
emprise." 

16. Wisest Scholars: Many students who had returned 
from the war were in the audience, welcomed back by their 
revered mother, their Alma Mater. 

20. Peddling: Engaging in small, trifling interests. Lowell's 
attitude toward science is that of Wordsworth, when he 
speaks of the dry-souled scientist as one who is all eyes and 
no heart, " One that would peep and botanize Upon his 
mother's grave." 

21. The pseudo-science of astrology, seeking to tell com- 
monplace fortunes by the stars. 

25-26. Clear fame: Compare Milton's Lycidas: 

' Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise 
To scorn delights and live laborious days." 

32. Half - virtues : Is Lowell disparaging the virtues of 
peace and home in comparison with the heroic virtues of 
war? Or are these " half-virtues " contrasted with the 
loftier virtue, the devotion to Truth? 

34. That stem device: The seal of Harvard College, 
chosen by its early founders, bears the device of a shield 
with the word Ve-ri-tas (truth) upon three open books. 

46. Sad faith: Deep, serious faith, or there may be a 



164 NOTES 

slight touch of irony in the word, with a glance at the gloomy 
faith of early puritanism and its " lifeless creed " (1. 62). 
62. Lifeless creed: Compare Tennyson's: 

" Ancient form 
Thro' which the spirit breathes no more." 

73. The tide of the ocean in its flow and ebb is under 
the influence of the moon. To get the sense of the metaphor, 
" fickle " must be read wath " Fortune " — unless, perchance, 
we like Juliet regard the moon as the " inconstant moon." 

81. To protect one's self everyone connives against 
everyone else. Compare Sir Launfal, 1. 11. Instead of 
climbing Sinais we " cringe and plot." 

82. Compare Sir Launfal, 1. 26. The whole passage, 
11. 76-87, is a distant echo of the second and third stanzas 
of Sir Launfal. 

83-85. Puppets: The puppets are the pasteboard actors 
in the Punch and Judy show, operated by unseen wires. 
84. An echo of Macbeth, V, 5: 

" Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player 
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, 
And then is heard no more." 

97. Elder than the Day: Elder than the first Day. " And 
God called the light Day," etc. (Genesis i, 5.) We may 
have light from the divine fountains. 

110-114. In shaping this elaborate battle metaphor, one 
can easily believe the poet to have had in mind some fierce 
mountain struggle during the war, such as the battle of 
Lookout Mountain. 

111. Creeds: Here used in the broad sense of convictions, 
principles, beliefs. 

115-118. The construction is faulty in these lines. The 
two last clauses should be co-ordinated. The substance of 
the meaning is: Peace has her wreath, while the cannon are 
silent and while the sword slumbers. Lowell's attention 



NOTES 165 

was called to this defective passage by T. W. Higginson, and 
he replied: " Your criticism is perfectly just, and I am much 
obliged to you for it — though I might defend myself, I 
believe, by some constructions even looser in some of the 
Greek choruses. But on the whole, when I have my choice, 
I prefer to make sense." He then suggested an emendation, 
which somehow failed to get into the published poem: 

" Ere yet the sharp, decisive word 
Redden the cannon's lips, and while the Sword." 

120. Baal's stone obscene: Human sacrifices were offered 
on the altars of Baal. (Jeremiah xix, 5.) 
^ 147-205. This strophe was not in the ode as delivered, 
but was written immediately after the occasion, and included 
in the published poem. "It is so completely imbedded in 
the structure of the ode," says Scudder, " that it is difficult 
to think of it as an afterthought. It is easy to perceive that 
while the glow of composition and of recitation was still 
upon him, Lowell suddenly conceived this splendid illustra- 
tion, and indeed climax of the utterance, of the Ideal which 
is so impressive in the fifth stanza . . . Into these threescore 
lines Lowell has poured a conception of Lincoln, which may 
justly be said to be to-day the accepted idea which Americans 
hold of their great President. It was the final expression 
of the judgment which had slowly been forming in Lowell's 
own mind." 

In a letter to Richard Watson Gilder, Lowell says: " The 
passage about Lincoln was not in the ode as originally re- 
cited, but added immediately after. More than eighteen 
months before, however, I had written about Lincoln in the 
N'orth American Review — an article that pleased him. I 
did divine him earlier than most men of the Brahmin caste." 

It is a singular fact that the other great New England 
poets, Longfellow, Whittier, and Holmes, had almost nothing 
to say about Lincoln. 

150. Wept with the passion, etc. : An article in the Atlantic 



166 NOTES 

Monthly for June, 1865, began with this passage: " The funeral 
procession of the late President of the United States has 
passed through the land from Washington to his final resting- 
place in the heart of the prairies. Along the line of more 
than fifteen hundred miles his remains were borne, as it 
were, through continued lines of the people ; and the number 
of mourners and the sincerity and unanimity of grief was 
such as never before attended the obsequies of a human 
being; so that the terrible catastrophe of his end hardly 
struck more awe than the majestic sorrow of the people." 

170. Outward grace is dust: An allusion to Lincoln's 
awkward and rather unkempt outward appearance. 

173. Supple-tempered will: One of the most pronounced 
traits of Lincoln's character was his kindly, almost femininely 
gentle and sympathetic spirit. With this, however, was 
combined a determination of steel. 

175-178. Nothing of Europe here: There was nothing of 
Europe in him, or, if anything, it was of Europe in her early 
ages of freedom before there was any distinction of slave 
and master, groveling Russian Serf and noble Lord or Peer. 
180. One of Plutarch's men: The distinguished men of 
Greece and Rome whom Plutarch immortalized in his Lives 
are accepted as types of human greatness. 
182. Innative: Inborn, natural. 

187. He knew to bide his time: He knew how to bide his 
time, as in Milton's Lycidas, " He knew himself to sing." 
Recall illustrations of Lincoln's wonderful patience and faith. 
198. The first American: In a prose article, Lowell calls 
him " The American of Americans." Compare Tennyson's 
"The last great Englishman," in the Ode on the Death of the 
Duke of Wellington. Stanza IV of Tennyson's ode should 
be compared with this Lincoln stanza. 

202. Along whose course, etc. : Along the course leading to 
the " inspiring goal." The conjunction of the words " pole " 
and " axles" easily leads to a confusion of metaphor in the 
passage. The imagery is from the ancient chariot races. 



NOTES 167 

232. Paean: A paean, originally a hymn to Apollo, 
usually of thanksgiving, is a song of triumph, any loud and 
joyous song. 

236. Dear ones: Underwood says in his biography of 
Lowell: "In the privately printed edition of the poem the 
names of eight of the poet's kindred are given. The nearest 
in blood are the nephews, General Charles Russell Lowell, 
killed at Winchester, Lieutenant James Jackson Lowell, at 
Seven Pines, and Captain William Lowell Putnam, at Ball's 
Bluff. Another relative was the heroic Colonel Robert G. 
Shaw, who fell in the assault on Fort Wagner." 

As a special memorial of Colonel Shaw, Lowell wrote the 
poem. Memoriae Positum. With deep tenderness he refers 
to his nephews in " Mr. Hosea Biglow to the Editor of the 
Atlantic Monthly "; 

" Why, hain't I held 'em on my knee? 

Did n't I love to see 'em growin'. 
Three likely lads ez wal could be, 

Hahnsome an' brave an' not tu knowin'? 
I set an' look into the blaze 

W^hose natur', jes' like theirn, keeps climbin', 
Ez long 'z it lives, in shinin' ways, 

An' half despise myself for rhymin'. 

Wut's words to them whose faith an' truth 

On War's red techstone rang true metal, 
Who ventered life an' love an' youth 

For the gret prize o' death in battle? 
To him who, deadly hurt, agen 

Flashed on afore the charge's thunder, 
Tippin' with fire the bolt of men 

Thet rived the Rebel line asunder? " 

243. When Moses sent men to " spy out " the Promised 
Land, they reported a land that " fioweth with milk and 
honey," and they " came unto the brook of Eshcol, and cut 



168 NOTES 

down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and 
they bare it between two upon a staff; and they brought of 
the pomegranates and of the figs " ( Numbers xiii.) 
245. Compare the famihar hne in Gray's Elegy: 

" The paths of glory lead but to the grave." 

and Tennyson's line, in the Ode to the Duke of Wellington: 

" The path of duty was the way of glory." 

In a letter to T. W. Higginson, who was editing the Har- 
vard Memorial Biographies, in which he was to print the ode, 
Lowell asked to have the following passage inserted at this 
point: 

" Virtue treads paths that end not in the grave. 

But through those constellations go 

That shed celestial influence on the brave. 

If life w^ere but to draw this dusty breath 

That doth our wits enslave. 

And with the crowd to hurry to and fro, 

Seeking we know not what, and finding death, 

These did unwisely; but if living be, 

As some are born to know. 

The power to ennoble, and inspire 

In other souls our brave desire 

For fruit, not leaves, of Time's immortal tree, 

These truly live, our thought's essential fire, 

And to the saner," etc. 

Lowell's remark in The Cathedral, that " second thoughts 
are prose," might be fairly applied to this emendation. 
Fortunately, the passage was never inserted in the ode. 

255. Orient: The east, morning; hence youth, aspiration, 
hope. The figure is continued in 1. 27L 

262. Who now shall sneer? In a letter to Mr. J. B. 
Thayer, who had criticized this strophe, Lowell admits 
" that there is a certain narrowness in it as an expression of 



NOTES 169 

the popular feeling as well as my own. I confess I have 
never got over the feeling of wrath with which (just after 
the death of my nephew Willie) I read in an English paper 
that nothing was to be hoped of an army officered by tailors' 
apprentices and butcher boys." But Lowell asks his critic 
to observe that this strophe " leads naturally " to the next, 
and " that I there justify " the sentiment. 

265. Roundhead and Cavalier: In a general way, it is 
said that New England was settled by the Roundheads, or 
Puritans, of England, and the South by the Cavaliers or 
Royalists. 

272-273. Plantagenets : A line of English kings, founded 
by Henry II, called also the House of Anjou, from their 
French origin. The House of Hapsburg is the Imperial 
family of Austria. The Guelfs were one of the great political 
parties in Italy in the Middle Ages, at long and bitter enmity 
with the Ghibelines. 

323. With this passage read the last two stanzas of Mr. 
Hosea Biglow to the Editor of the Atlantic Monthly, beginning: 

" Come, Peace! not like a mourner bowed 
For honor lost and dear ones wasted, 
But proud, to meet a people proud. 

With eyes that tell of triumphs tasted! " 

328. Helm: The helmet, the part of ancient armor for 
protecting the head, used here as the symbol of war. 

343. Upon receiving the news that the war was ended, 
Lowell wrote to his friend, Charles Eliot Norton: " The news, 
my dear Charles, is from Heaven. I felt a strange and tender 
exaltation. I wanted to laugh and I wanted to cry, and 
ended by holding my peace and feeling devoutly thankful. 
There is something magnificent in having a country to love." 



EXAMINATION QUESTIONS 

The following questions are taken from recent examination papers of 
the Examination Board established by the Association of Schools and 
Colleges in the Middle States and Maryland, and of the Regents of the 
State of New York. Generally only one question on The Vision of Sir 
Launfal is included in the examination paper for each year. 

Under what circumstances did the "vision" come to Sir 
Launfal? What was the vision? What was the effect upon 
him? 

What connection have the prehides in the Vision of Sir 
Launfal with the main divisions which they precede? What 
is their part in the poem as a whole? 

Contrast Sir Launfal's treatment of the leper at their first 
meeting with his treatment at their second. 

1. Describe a scene from the Vision of Sir Launfal. 

2. Describe the hall of the castle as Sir Launfal saw it on 
Christmas eve. 

"The soul partakes the season's youth . . . 
What wonder if Sir Lavmfal now 
Remembered the keeping of his vow?" 

Give the meaning of these lines, and explain what you 
think is Lowell's purpose in the preface from which they 
are taken. Give the substance of the corresponding preface 
to the other part of the poem, and account for the difference 
between the two. 

Describe the scene as it might have appeared to one stand- 
ing just outside the castle gate, as Sir Launfal emerged from 
his castle in his search for the Holy Grail. 

Compare the Ancient Mariner and the Vision of Sir Launfal 
with regard to the representation of a moral idea in each. 
171 



172 EXAMINATION QUESTIONS 

Explain the meaning of Sir Launfal's vision and show how 
it affected his conduct. 

Describe an ideal summer day as portrayed in the Vision 
of Sir Launfal. 

Quote at least ten lines. 

Discuss, with illustrations, Lowell's descriptions in the 
Vision of Sir Launfal, touching on two of the following points: 
— (a) beauty, (6) vividness, (c) attention to details. 

Write a description of winter as given in Part Second. 

Outline in tabular form the story of Sir Launfal's search 
for the Holy Grail; be careful to include in your outline the 
time, the place, the leading characters, and the leading 
events in their order. 



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